[HN Gopher] Executive wealth as a factor in return-to-office
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Executive wealth as a factor in return-to-office
Author : kappi
Score : 485 points
Date : 2025-03-02 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| rybosome wrote:
| I was at Google during their initial "return to office" mandate.
|
| During the TGIF (company all hands) discussing this, the
| architect of the policy, someone high up in the HR org, explained
| why it was necessary.
|
| I don't recall what they said, but I do recall that they happened
| to be working remotely at the time, after the policy against
| remote work had already gone into effect.
|
| The brazenness of lecturing us on why remote work was harmful to
| Google while working remotely was shocking. Predictably, the
| internal anger over this was enormous.
|
| Rules for thee but not for me, some animals are more equal than
| others, etc.
| kurthr wrote:
| The Stanford Hospital Nurses strike was driven by similar
| dynamics. Nurses had to work overtime through the entire
| pandemic while executives literally phoned it in for years!
| They were shocked, shocked, to discover that there was anger
| and resentment.
|
| It was little surprise that more than half were showing up
| daily on picket lines as admin was apparently surprised that
| they couldn't find "travelers" to fill critical ICU roles,
| while surgeons continued scheduling elective surgeries.
|
| It's still the case that the HR executive officer resides in LA
| and that Payroll is managed (with financially catastrophic
| results) from Hawaii. Both discipline and scheduling are also
| done almost entirely remote. It would be hilarious if not for
| the effects on staff and patients.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The nature of nursing is that you have to be in person. What
| HR did (and has been doing) is keeping the number of staff at
| a barebones level. They don't, for example, hire enough
| nurses that if one is out sick (during covid!) that there
| could be someone to cover the shift.
|
| They went so far as to only hire travel nurses (temps), who
| were commanding 100k+ salaries, when things got bad enough
| rather than filling a full time position. And, to add insult
| to injury, the nurses themselves have been getting salaries
| in the 30->50k range. So HR could have literally filled 2+
| positions for the cost of a single travel nurse.
|
| That's what has lead to a nursing shortage and burnout. HR
| cost cutting because "we just need the minimum and no
| backups". It's a big part of the strikes.
|
| Believe it or not, many nurses and doctors working in
| healthcare actually care about their patients. Something HR
| is more than willing to exploit to get them to work
| ridiculous hours.
| fjjjrjj wrote:
| > Something HR is more than willing to exploit to get them
| to work ridiculous hours.
|
| HR works for management and the board.
| kurthr wrote:
| I thought I had seen businesses run by every conceivable
| group, founders, engineers, sales, marketing, finance...
| and then I saw a hospital and realized it was run by HR.
| Every "may" in a rule becomes "shall" since anything else
| could be perceived as preferential. It makes the lives of
| both supervisors and supervised hell. Only the spiteful or
| incompetent rise.
|
| Of course the "why" is driven by the greatest risk in
| healthcare. Where most income comes from insurance is
| stable, the real risk is being sued. Hence rises "there
| shall be no exceptions" HR rule based hegemony.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm in a different country and have different almost
| everything, but one thing is constant: nurses are treated
| like crap.
|
| I'm a radiographer and moaned to a colleague about the
| holdup I'd have with my 7am x-ray ward round in ICU. 'The
| nurses are still doing handover at 8am, so won't help and I
| can't do anything.'
|
| An older radiographer told me that the nurses stopped
| getting paid at 7am. The overtime they were working every
| single day after a night shift was all unpaid.
| arebop wrote:
| Your numbers are way off
| [https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Stanford-Health-
| Care/salaries/Reg...]
| techpeach wrote:
| I would imagine the logic from the HR director is something
| like "the reason you're not as successful as me is you don't
| know how to manage your time well"
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A role worth replacing with Gemini.
| xvilka wrote:
| Most of the management, as well as bureaucracy could be
| substituted with AI for sure.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Which is ironic because they manage our time for us to force
| us to have less of it.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Fussell's _Class_ (1983) covers some of this. His upper-middle
| (in class--income tends to track with these social classes, but
| not always) are accustomed to very free lifestyles relative to,
| especially, the middle class (or the lower two tiers of his
| multifaceted "prole" class--the upper tier of that class does
| stuff like own successful plumbing or welding businesses, not
| work at Wal Mart or whatever)
|
| A major class marker distinguishing the upper-middle from the
| middle ends up being that the former are barely surveilled,
| largely free to set their own schedule, and basically are
| trusted to do the right thing (never mind that perfectly
| ordinary behavior patterns from them would be regarded as
| instantly fireable for others; it's a different standard),
| while the middle gets constant status reports, return to office
| mandates, stricter start and stop times, maybe drug tests.
|
| (The actual upper class, of course, simply don't meaningfully
| have managers at all)
|
| You know that older, expert manager everyone says is great that
| they bring in to run the business in the show Silicon Valley?
| Who spends a bunch of his time ignoring the place to breed
| horses or whatever, and seems to think that's normal and fine?
| That's this kind of thing. He doesn't even get why that might
| be wrong, or why it might be shitty to take a big paycheck and
| ask hard work from others then fuck off to a rich-dude hobby
| half the time--that's just what _his kind_ of people do.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's funny how often Silicon Valley (the tv show) gets
| referenced. There are so many painfully accurate cliches.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| _Class_ is a really great book, as is are most of the books
| that Paul Fussell wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I can't speak from personal experience to the accuracy of
| some of his characterizations, but he _nailed_ the ones
| that (I now see) form parts of my background and are common
| in my family: various levels of "prole", plus "middle". It
| was really weird to see our quirks of behavior and taste
| (some of which I'd never have noticed if not for the book)
| dissected and analyzed that way, but fun and gave me new
| ways of looking at all of it.
|
| I've found his upper-middle and upper class descriptions
| constantly useful for deepening my insight into media, the
| news, work-life, and even history. Usually in small ways,
| but it's still pretty cool. Class markers are _everywhere_
| in media, and a lot of it I was surely noticing
| subconsciously, but being aware of them and able to point
| out many elements of them is a different experience. It 's
| like seeing into the minds of the set designers, costume
| designers, and actors.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Awareness in general is already worthwhile, but has it
| been useful for other things? E.g. Changing your views on
| government labor policy, worker-friendly laws, etc.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It's led to a few things:
|
| 1) I've developed a vague notion that much of the last
| 3-4 decades has, along with other (mostly bad) social,
| political, and economic changes in the time after trust-
| busting got neutered in the 1970s and Reaganism and
| neoliberalism took over (RIP neoliberalism, at least on
| one side of the aisle, LOL, glad to see you finally go
| even if the rest of that's all a shit-show) has been a
| kind of one-sided upper-middle civil war. It _sure looks
| like_ the finance guys (solidly part of that class, for
| the most part) teamed up with the professional managerial
| class (the least-solidly part of that class, of the major
| traditional categories therein) to do their best to shove
| doctors, academics, and to some extent lawyers, down into
| the Middle, with no organized resistance on the other
| side.
|
| 2) I see a lot of how programmers are treated through
| this lens. Companies seem _extremely_ reluctant to give
| programmers upper-middle perks. I think #1 is part of
| why: managers really, really don 't want to mint a new
| upper-middle cohort even as they're busy clearing the
| field for only themselves and finance bros, and
| programmers (lots of us, at least) _have the income_ to
| be there, but sit in a weird half-in-half-out for the
| upper middle, because we 've mostly been denied things
| like private offices and certain other liberties, and
| subjected to micromanagement and humiliating hazing-
| ritual hiring processes, even as incomes soar and the
| snacks are good or whatever. _Socially_ we are firmly
| "under" even a lot of other parts of companies that make
| less money, and part of that's come through cultivation
| of certain attitudes about programmers, and denial of
| "higher" perks.
|
| Beyond that I was already pretty firmly on the side of
| stronger labor, better labor protection laws, and _far_
| more unionization, and _Class_ didn 't take me any
| farther from those things.
|
| I read his optimism for his supposed "Class X" and the
| plain fact that none of that turned out to be what he
| thought it was as, if anything, another reason to be for
| the above. Organization and force (read broadly, I don't
| necessarily mean stuff like "hitting people") will get us
| to a better place, not hoping to be saved by a social
| movement.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Wow I wasn't aware of the realities of #1 but I certainly
| lived through #2 before I became an independent
| organizer. I'm buying _Class_ on my next bookstore trip
| -- thank you for expanding your thoughts!
|
| P.S. Self-plug: you might find my newsletter last month
| [0] mildly interesting. See the section "My Own Views"
|
| [0] https://handmadecities.com/news/splitting-from-
| handmade-netw...
| lurk2 wrote:
| > A major class marker distinguishing the upper-middle from
| the middle ends up being that the former are barely
| surveilled, largely free to set their own schedule, and
| basically are trusted to do the right thing (never mind that
| perfectly ordinary behavior patterns from them would be
| regarded as instantly fireable for others; it's a different
| standard), while the middle gets constant status reports,
| return to office mandates, stricter start and stop times,
| maybe drug tests.
|
| When I was having trouble finding work this was one of my
| biggest issues. I was qualified to be working independently
| but all the entry-level work I could find would have involved
| being treated like I was in high school again, whereas before
| I could use the afternoon to tinker or read and no one cared
| as long as my work was getting done. This is why office jobs
| end up being coveted to the point that a university graduate
| will be making the same amount working an office job as a
| retail associate at a Walmart.
| jumpman500 wrote:
| It's time to unionize. The top is out of touch and the
| valuations of these tech titans aren't just staggering; they're
| symptomatic of a system that values profit over people. These
| tycoons at the helm are not just steering companies--they're
| puppeteering democracy, pushing political agendas that many of
| us find abhorrent and irrelevant to our lives. Unionization
| isn't merely about better pay or working conditions; it's about
| reclaiming power from this oligarchy that's grown too powerful,
| too influential. The tech community needs to wake up and get
| these clowns in line, we could shut these companies down if we
| organize.
| einszwei wrote:
| Tech and Software adjacent professions have to be ones that
| are least likely to unionize.
|
| There was an internal survey (unofficial) at my workplace
| right after a mass layoff 2 years back about how many were
| interested in forming a union. There were 3 options -
| Interested, Not Sure and Against. The option with most votes
| was "Against".
|
| I could go into the reasons which were submitted in survey
| but in short most were related to hyper individualism that is
| so pervasive.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Admitting in a survey that you're pro-union might be
| (rightly) perceived as high-risk, no reward.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Yes, but the hyper-individualism is very familiar. I
| wonder if the balance has changed since the 2022 wake-up
| call.
| callc wrote:
| Wow that really sounds like a captor killing a few captives
| and then asking the rest of the "ok, so who else wants to
| try to work together to escape?"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| One would get far better responses if you just used the
| word "professional association" instead of "union".
| anonym29 wrote:
| Former big tech worker here, I'd support unionization
| wholeheartedly, but it's also worth advocating for cessation
| of all Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, etc products and
| software. Build software for linux only, explicitly choose to
| not support Windows, Mac OS, iOS, or Android. Support and
| test on Gecko-based browsers, reject Webkit-based and Blink-
| based browsers. Act like people are making you uncomfortable
| whenever they offer statements, comments, or questions that
| normalize gmail, facebook, iphones, or outlook. Become a
| FLOSS evangelist. Help your non-technical friends install a
| browser that supports manifest v2 and full-fat ad blocking.
| Help people set up adguard or pihole. Make it sound cool,
| easy, and seductive. Disrespect the ruling elite / "eat the
| rich!" vibes. Normalize anti-surveillance. Normalize full-
| face masks and juggalo paint and avante garde clothing that
| disrupts facial recognition algorithms. Build on a VPS, build
| on a dedicated server, build on clouds that aren't owned and
| operated by multitrillion dollar conglomerate monstrosities.
| Make AWS, Azure, and GCP as socially unacceptable as racism,
| sexism, and transphobia.
|
| This isn't a call to arms for luddites, this is a call to
| kill the trillion dollar companies with grassroots direct
| action that is intentionally and purposefully organized to
| decrease the revenue and social acceptance of these
| organizations. This is a pro-tech movement, it's just pro-
| tech that respects your freedom, your privacy, your rights to
| decide what your hardware and software are / are not doing.
| We will not be the feudal subjects of these tyrants.
|
| We must be the revolutionary change we want to see by lunging
| straight for the hearts of these evil empires. Grassroots
| direct action, spread the word.
| efitz wrote:
| Practically all software that matters is already Linux
| only. That happened 15-20 years ago as a combination of
| "cloud" and "SaaS".
|
| Android and iOS apps, with the exception of games, are
| usually just thin presentation layers around cloud apps.
| Hint: if you have to log in, the real app a cloud app
| running on a Linux server.
|
| But I don't see what that has to do with executive
| compensation.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Exorbitant executive compensation coming from the same
| companies that are aggressively infringing upon the
| rights of their end users are two expressions of the same
| tyrannical desires of these big tech companies. They're
| trying to bring about neofeudalism where we're all
| peasants serving our big tech lords.
|
| Also, it's not about supporting Linux, it's about _not_
| supporting tyrants (Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, et.
| al.). Whenever you offer compatibility for Windows, Mac
| OS, iOS, or Android, you are excusing, encouraging, and
| supporting tyranny and neofeudalism.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Android and iOS apps, with the exception of games, are
| usually just thin presentation layers around cloud apps.
|
| Consider using and supporting GNU/Linux phones. Sent from
| my Librem 5.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Upvoted from my PinePhone Pro :)
| fsflover wrote:
| Thanks for your support. However, your upvote didn't
| register (I still have 1 point on the comment). I noticed
| this sometimes happening with me recently, too. You can
| verify this by unvoting and looking at my karma in the
| profile not changing.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I think an equal number of upvotes and a downvotes/flags
| does this, too.
| fsflover wrote:
| The test I suggested would reveal that, too.
| kiliantics wrote:
| The right time would have been when the going was good some
| years back. Tech workers could have put together an
| unparalleled strike fund and commanded unprecedented
| political power. We could have truly changed the world.
|
| But, as already mentioned, if you think sentiment is
| unfriendly to unions now, it's nothing compared to how it was
| back then. The typical tech worker somehow thought they were
| already changing the world, doing some VC's bidding for
| nickels on the dollar, adding sparkly features to another B2B
| SaaS product...
| mjmsmith wrote:
| This attitude seems more easily explained by the belief that,
| unlike you, the peons haven't earned their perks yet.
| jumpman500 wrote:
| Yup, that's the problem. They view people as peons. Not
| people with lives, ambitions, family and friends. The only
| way to correct that view is to disobey.
| mlinhares wrote:
| It's a great reminder to tech people that they're still
| peasants.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| The phrase temporarily embarrassed millionaires is even more
| true for tech workers than most Americans. Especially for any
| who have entrepreneurial dreams or who are at start-ups for
| the stock options. The carrot is right there...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's literally true, even without dreams or stock option
| bets, that many tech workers are temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires. The source tweets are by an Amazon VP; an
| Amazon SWE salary with even moderately responsible spending
| is enough to retire as a multimillionaire.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I mean, the steinbeck quote is from 1960.. You will need
| probably ~$30 million dollars at retirement if you are
| 30yo today to retire as a 1960s millionaire.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The Steinbeck quote from the 1960s said "temporarily
| embarassed capitalist". Someone who has "entrepreneurial
| dreams" or is "at start-ups for the stock options",
| hoping to get wealthy through appreciation of their
| equity ownership, is unambiguously a capitalist.
|
| "Millionaire" was added in a 2004 misquote by Robert
| Wright, and $1 million in 2004 dollars is about $1.7
| million in 2025 dollars.
| loeg wrote:
| The phrase originally means that the subject is not a
| millionaire and likely will never be one, whereas many of
| us in tech are already millionaires or very likely to
| become one if we work in industry for any amount of time.
|
| It took me about seven years in industry, starting from my
| first internship, to hit my first million. Non-FAANG and
| nothing magical happening with appreciating options or
| stock, just ordinary W-2 work.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| I'm glad we pierced the illusion that tech workers are
| somehow "one of them" because of high salaries. You're not.
| You're just labor.
|
| (And big tech execs still make orders of magnitude more in
| compensation than you do. You two were never alike!)
| ryandrake wrote:
| We still see this attitude in HN comments sometimes. People
| thinking their piddly $500K in RSUs that vests over the
| next decade somehow qualifies them entry into the Global
| Elite class. And then they'll argue against unions and
| other things that help workers because they see themselves
| as rubbing elbows with Jeff Bezos. Yea, yea, your handful
| of stock options make you just like him...
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Have a listen to John Lennon's "Working-Class Hero". Still
| relevant. Maybe more so.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve-mANenpC4
| switch007 wrote:
| HR are professional gaslighters and internal-PR masters. I'm
| not even surprised by their ability to twist things anymore
| ein0p wrote:
| As Laszlo Bock (head of HR at the time) quipped at TGIF when he
| announced Obamacare cuts to Google's healthcare coverage: "But
| hey, you get unlimited colonoscopies".
| hyperhopper wrote:
| It's more insidious than that.
|
| Being forced to RTO across the country, then immediately laid
| off after I uprooted my life to do so, all while knowing the
| layoffs were planned while they were telling me to move across
| the country, is fucked.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's happening because employers are desperate to get their
| power back while workers have no rights. It also makes it
| harder to leave an org, as orgs are also desperate to hold on
| to and develop existing talent due to forward looking working
| age population demographics. This is a desperate immune
| response.
|
| (also why employers are trying to staff up offices offshore
| in LATAM and India)
|
| Edit: @tbrownaw all of the responses to your inquiry are
| accurate.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _It's happening because employers are desperate to get
| their power back while workers have no rights._
|
| What does this mean in concrete terms? What useful power do
| they gain based on physical presence, and what rights are
| currently absent but coming (back?) soon?
| scott_w wrote:
| > Being forced to RTO across the country, then
| immediately laid off after I uprooted my life to do so
|
| Definitely power there if you know your staff have just
| uprooted their lives and now depend on you for their
| immediate term existence...
| PantaloonFlames wrote:
| The power in the market for labor.
|
| If remote labor is the norm, then every tech company has
| to compete with every other, across all geographies. If
| local labor is required, the employers can manage or
| restrict their competitive environment. There are fewer
| options for the employee.
|
| The bulk layoffs of the past couple of years have a
| similar effect - gaining power. It makes every employee a
| little more conscious that their employment is
| provisional and conditional.
|
| But I think RTO goes beyond just market power gains.
| There are many workers who are conscientious, attentive,
| and dedicated. For each one of those there are plenty who
| are just punching their time card. I'm no expert but it
| seems to me that RTO gives the employer and mid-level
| managers better visibility into all of that dynamic.
|
| But RTO fights against the reality that employers have
| constructed distributed teams, with people working from
| all over the globe on the same project. If that's the
| case, what is the difference whether I work from my home
| office, or a hotel desk space in a big building alongside
| people I don't know.?
| brookst wrote:
| > If remote labor is the norm, then every tech company
| has to compete with every other, across all geographies.
| If local labor is required, the employers can manage or
| restrict their competitive environment.
|
| Doesn't that seem backwards? A company that supports
| remote work has a worldwide talent pool.l, including
| lower cost geographies. A company that insists on RTO can
| only hire locally, so has less talent available and can't
| arbitrage labor costs.
|
| I think RTO makes no sense, but I don't see how it gives
| employers more power.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I have thought about this too.
|
| * Remote workers aren't actually a worldwide labor force
| because of time zones, so the competition on the labor
| side is less than in theory.
|
| * Remote work diminished the difference in liquidity
| between labor and capital markets. Capital is by nature
| more liquid than labor, and being more liquid gives you
| an advantage. As you say, the competitive pressures exist
| in both markets, and maybe this is a wash in terms of
| power.
|
| * Remote workers can pay off mortgages faster, leading to
| more early retirements.
|
| I still think the primary reason is a desire to manage
| according to the old style, which is a different argument
| than the GP.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| > Doesn't that seem backwards? A company that supports
| remote work has a worldwide talent pool.l, including
| lower cost geographies.
|
| Humans are not just replaceable cogs. When you hire
| someone, there are several things built into the
| assumption of that work that we take for granted. For
| example, federal holidays or work culture. The US is
| notorious for accepting overwork as the norm (people even
| brag about working 60-hour weeks) where that's just not
| acceptable in other parts of the world. That's obviously
| not true everywhere (e.g. 9-9-6 in China), but is true in
| enough places that it's not trivial to just swap in
| person A from country X with person B in country Y.
| That's not even touching on labor laws, language barriers
| (e.g. understanding office lingo like "circle back"), or
| value structure. The latter is huge where Americans care
| a lot about their jobs and careers and most parts of the
| world don't have the concept of a career.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Yes, and moreover it's obvious from anyone's experience
| that applying for remote roles means workers will have
| MUCH more competition for the role. Employers ought to
| love this.
| aisenik wrote:
| Capturing and controlling a market is preferable to
| competitive markets under our political-economic system.
| It's been the model for Silicon Valley since Bezos sold
| his plan to lose money until Amazon had a controlling
| stake of the retail market in the late 90s. It's a
| seemingly unavoidable outcome of under-regulated
| capitalism.
| NBJack wrote:
| Couple this with regular threats and fear mongering about
| AI coming for the jobs of tech workers, and the picture
| gets even more somber. The tech industry wants to cheapen
| labor.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The tech industry wants to cheapen labor.
|
| Of course. And the workers want more money.
|
| It's how markets work.
| d0mine wrote:
| It is worth mentioning that companies colluding for
| forced RTO, so people can't easily leave
| lukevp wrote:
| Not OP, but RTO forces geographic centralization and
| reduces mobility of their employees. If you can work
| remotely then you have a much larger pool. And I think
| that opening the door to remote work made employees
| realize that there was some power and some negotiation to
| be had on working conditions (basically our generation's
| version of the 40 hr work week in response to the
| Industrial Revolution)
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Office work requires living within commute distance of
| the office, which is much more expensive and keeps the
| employee tethered to their job. Remote workers are less
| threatened by layoffs because they can choose to live in
| a lower COL area and have their pick of other remote-
| friendly jobs rather than being limited to other
| companies in their metro or having to uproot their lives
| to move somewhere else. This is on top of the perceived
| benefits employers have surveiling and micromanaging
| office work.
|
| As for workers having fewer protections rn, _gestures in
| the general direction of DC_.
| gruez wrote:
| >Office work requires living within commute distance of
| the office, which is much more expensive and keeps the
| employee tethered to their job. Remote workers are less
| threatened by layoffs because they can choose to live in
| a lower COL area and have their pick of other remote-
| friendly jobs rather than being limited to other
| companies in their metro or having to uproot their lives
| to move somewhere else.
|
| This doesn't make any sense. Remote jobs are... remote.
| Moving to mountain view or whatever doesn't make you
| "limited to other companies in their metro". You can
| still find remote jobs, but now you have the additional
| option of in-person jobs in the bay area.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| If you move to Mountain View, you need to be able to
| afford to live in Mountain View. That takes a lot of
| remote jobs off the table, or substantially diminishes
| their prospects.
|
| If you live in Omaha and work remotely, far more remote
| jobs are available.
| photonthug wrote:
| Fang companies have colluded together before to surpress
| the labor market, litigation about this goes back to 2010
| or so.
|
| Since that's always an option.. yeah clearly keeping
| talent in high col places is a part of the cudgel that
| employers want to use against employees. It's similar to
| healthcare being connected to employment really. If the
| labor market was actually free from ultimately coercive
| tactics like this then the world would look very
| different.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes. But living in Orlando Florida means I can accept a
| remote job that pays less. I would have to get a remote
| job that pays 5x more and I don't pay state income taxes.
|
| Remote jobs on average pay less because you are competing
| with people who live in the MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska.
|
| Even formerly "field by design" roles that were
| permanently remote at AWS (where I use to work) paid less
| than in office jobs. Now those jobs are also in office
| jobs at both Amazon and Google (GCP).
| blitzar wrote:
| It's not the details of the request, it is the request
| itself.
|
| Do this, or else.
| financetechbro wrote:
| This is disgusting. I'm sorry about that
| jarsin wrote:
| This was at Google?
| thayne wrote:
| It's quite likely RTO was an initial attempt to reduce
| headcount by encouraging people to quit, without having to
| pay severance.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Do Americans companies HAVE to pay severance? Don't
| American companies do layoffs all the time?
| jarsin wrote:
| No severance is not apart of the law. You can be laid off
| and fired at anytime for any reason without severance. My
| manager laughed in my face when I asked if there was
| severance when being laid off in GFC.
|
| Some states even have laws that employers don't have to
| pay accrued vacation time. For example Nevada says
| employers with under 50 employees don't have to pay
| accrued vacation.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| The WARN act dictates that you need to provide 60 days
| notice for certain mass layoffs. Typically this means you
| are laid off, but remain on payroll for 60 days.
| h14h wrote:
| I got laid off at the start of my first day back in the new
| office. Had to leave my morning standup early to receive the
| news.
|
| Fortunately I didn't have to uproot my life or move cities,
| but it was a wakeup call as to the true nature of at will
| employment. You can't take anything for granted.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > You can't take anything for granted
|
| A plan B is always a good thing to have. I knew a middle
| class engineer a few years ago who spent every dime of his
| salary on installment payments for this and that. The
| company then had to cut back, and he went into a furious
| panic. It was a trap he set for himself, although he blamed
| the company.
|
| Even if the government guarantees you lifetime employment,
| it isn't a guarantee.
| pyrale wrote:
| Maybe they hoped that you'd leave because of RTO, sparing
| them the financial cost associated with the layoff.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Of course the layoffs were planned during the RTO, that way
| they have to fire less people because a lot of them will
| leave on their own!
| grandempire wrote:
| Imagine expecting equal treatment to higher ups who run your
| company. Anyone who told you otherwise lied to you. Set
| expectations accordingly and you won't be disappointed.
| rybosome wrote:
| Imagine a very fat king standing before his starving
| populace, explaining why there would be even less food this
| winter as he munched on a turkey leg.
|
| I know executives have different rules and laws that govern
| them. But I can remember a time when they would've had the
| decency, shame or whatever else to attempt to obscure this.
| That HR VP could have come into the office for one day, the
| day that he was explaining his RTO mandate to the entire
| company.
|
| That he didn't feel embarrassed about delivering this mandate
| while very visibly defying it himself is beyond
| differentiated treatment, it is open disdain for the (upper)
| working class.
| grandempire wrote:
| Proverbial kings are a fact of life. Use your circle of
| influence to ensure your concern is heard, but don't set
| yourself up for disappointment when you find out they get
| better Christmas bonuses, time off, and cooler parties.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| It's not about reciprocity or coherent rules. Its about power
| distance. "you work for me" sort of thing.
| drstewart wrote:
| lmao! It's the same as all the sysadmin folks at my
| organization who have a policy of locking down all our
| computers without admin rights whereas I noticed they DID have
| admin rights.
|
| Rules for thee but not for me, typical tech nerds.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Somehow the people making policies always exempt themselves.
| Velorivox wrote:
| Also a recent Xoogler. There was a pretty popular thread where
| someone essentially ragequit due to being talked down to by
| someone in an all-hands, after having tried to resolve their
| issues with specific policies via other means. They took a
| principled stand, which seems exceedingly rare at Google.
|
| The main theme of their post was that engineering had become a
| second-class profession at a de-facto engineering firm.
|
| If I recall correctly, Steve Jobs had something to say about
| that very transition...
|
| Edit: By thread I mean internal Email thread at Google.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They aren't pushing it because they want to get back to the
| office or even dont understand the impacts. They're pushing it
| because they want more control over and accountability from their
| employees. Some even want a percentage of the employees to quit.
| EncomLab wrote:
| Your last point is the biggest driver - it is also why the
| rules are arbitrarily enforced.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's useful to have most of your workforce (or other
| populations, as with police forces) in routine violation of
| unenforced rules so that one has cover for any individual
| persecution one finds convenient
| chrisweekly wrote:
| +1 Insightful.
|
| This dynamic is at play in every big company I've
| encountered in my 27 year career in tech.
| dividefuel wrote:
| I think there are a lot of reasons, and forced attrition is
| definitely something they see as a benefit. However, I do
| genuinely think that a lot of them _truly believe_ that working
| together in an office, face-to-face, is important. RTO is not
| just a cold calculation, but also reflective of their moral
| values towards work.
|
| Whether those values actually lead to a better company is the
| part that, I feel, continues to lack evidence.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I used to work for a place that had "Focus Weeks". A week
| where there were to be no meetings, and you could work on
| whatever was important. Everyone I knew loved it - could
| accomplish so much more when you are not interrupted every
| other hour for some marginal-utility status update.
|
| Management...apparently did not enjoy the time. I assume so
| many of them do nothing but meetings, they were probably
| bored. The upper leadership, for whom the work is
| predominantly meetings, is likely not satisfied without
| maximal people in sight.
| tdeck wrote:
| > I do genuinely think that a lot of them truly believe that
| working together in an office, face-to-face, is important.
|
| Because their job is all having meetings and walking around
| asking people what's new.
| tdiff wrote:
| What exactly is wrong here? If workers don't want that control,
| well, they can look for another place. Companies are not
| supposed to solve social problems like how people care for
| children.
|
| After all, are there any workforce troubles in companies that
| mandated RTO, besides negative hacker news comments?
| EncomLab wrote:
| Not sure what the purpose is here - it reads more like a soft
| flex than anything else. We all know "why" RTO gets pushed - and
| it's not just that executives are living royal lives while the
| peasants are expected to stress over traffic while their kids
| wait abandoned at some public school. If anything, thinking that
| RTO is just about being disconnected highlights how disconnected
| the author actually is - because it is far more often the case
| that RTO is driven by tax incentives, rent incentives, and
| occupant use agreements than just some petty executive saying
| "let them commute!".
| jalk wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the tax/rent incentives, as it's not
| obvious what those are.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Same talk as RTO being driven by real estate investors'
| influence. I have yet to see some numbers, evidence of this.
| inetknght wrote:
| Commercial real estate value is often estimated using
| number of people (feet) who go through the building.
|
| So for example, if you've got 500 people (customers)
| walking through your building plus 200 people (employees)
| doing things, then the restaurants and shipping stores and
| etc can estimate some % of those feet turning into sales.
|
| But if you've got only 300 people (customers) walking
| through your building plus 50 people (employees) doing
| things, that % of feet turning into sales goes waaaaaay
| down. And your retail outlets in the building end up with
| far fewer sales. They either go out of business or demand
| cheaper rent.
|
| That's just _one_ way of estimating commercial real estate.
|
| Let's figure your attached parking garage. Assuming it's
| not-free, then all those employees not paying their parking
| dues ends up causing the parking garage to not generate
| revenue. Ooof. Or, let's say it's "free". Well, the people
| who reserved spots paid for those spots whether they use
| them or not. But the people who don't reserve spots? The
| business isn't seeing a return on investment if their
| employees aren't using them, so why pay their share for
| maintenance of that parking garage?
|
| What about the HVAC and plumbing? The building owner's son
| owns those businesses, and it's pretty damn expensive to
| keep HVAC and plumbing working at peak efficiency. It
| becomes a lot easier to do if they're not used as much! But
| your son's business is going to get churned if you don't
| pay them less for the decreased maintenance costs. And you
| can't just _stop_ maintenance because those things get
| damned expensive when they 're unmaintained.
|
| And the shipping staff? Well they have to come to the
| office anyway otherwise nothing gets shipped. It's not fair
| to those staff! You pay them complete shit, and they used
| to be able to eat lunch at a decent restaurant and have a
| decent place to park and have good air conditioning and
| working toilet. But now, with just everyone else being out
| of office, the restaurant went out of business and the HVAC
| is set to a wider range of climate and the toilet's been
| clogged for a while.
|
| Instead of paying the shipping staff something reasonable
| to offset their changes, or changing the way that lunch and
| support services are handled... just demand everyone else
| come to the office too. That's cheaper.
| grandempire wrote:
| All of that doesn't make sense because offices are a cost
| paid to optimize the efficiency of labor.
|
| Nobody would hurt labor productivity to save an office.
| It's backward
| smw wrote:
| I think this assumes there are no conflicts of interest?
| grandempire wrote:
| You start a successful business- when do you start paying
| for an office?
| fweimer wrote:
| Productivity is difficult to measure. I suspect many
| managers just don't know how to do it, or are not very
| confident about the results. In-person interactions in an
| office give managers additional information (such as
| height). For many, it makes management tasks easier to
| carry out and generally less stressful (but not
| necessarily with objectively improved results, I assume).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I don't necessarily buy the arguments around real estate
| investment, but I think it's important to note that the
| office is a construct from before the popularity of the
| internet. A lot of the current crop of exec started their
| jobs before remote work was viable, so their mental model
| of how work is done might require an office because
| that's how they used to work.
|
| It's entirely possible that the question of "labor
| productivity" has nothing to do with why exec wants us
| all back in the bullpen, where they can gleefully stare
| at us from inside their offices.
| grandempire wrote:
| Undoubtedly the internet makes more remote roles
| possible. I'm just saying the business already hates
| paying for the office. Their incentive is aligned with
| regards to having less office space.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm arguing that maybe businesses don't actually hate it.
| Maybe execs love it and prioritize it.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Their incentive is aligned with regards to having less
| office space._
|
| Really? Then why do _you_ think that return-to-office is
| mandated by so many large organizations? By following
| that line of thinking then surely their larger
| _footprint_ would yield even larger savings for work-
| from-home?
| grandempire wrote:
| Because they believe it will optimize their labor costs
| (the most expensive part of white collar business ).
|
| They give employees space in that building so that people
| have a dedicated space to do their work, free from
| outside distraction.
| EncomLab wrote:
| This is very much an open question.
| dboreham wrote:
| Big companies extract tax benefits from governments in
| exchange for locating their large buildings within said
| government's jurisdiction. Presumably in some cases said tax
| benefits come with some sort of verification that the
| expected quid pro quo (employees wandering around buying
| lunch and so on) happened.
| EncomLab wrote:
| Our building has multiple first floor stores/restaurants/gym
| - and post Covid our rental agreements stipulate an average
| daily occupancy threshold; with a penalty/incentive program
| based on failing or exceeding that threshold as it is part of
| the agreements set up with the retailers. There are business
| tax deductions for on-site workers like utilities,
| maintenance, office supplies, property insurance, etc.
| Additionally, there are tax situations - Schaad v. Alder in
| Ohio for example - where municipalities receive or lose
| income based on the location of remote workers. In that
| specific case the municipality where the remote employee
| actually worked received no income while the municipality
| where the office existed did.
| joshuaturner wrote:
| Cities benefit from people being in office and thus, in the
| city spending money. In 2024, SF had a new business tax plan
| to incentivize employers to bring people back to the office,
| and I wouldn't be surprised if other cities did similar.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-economy-tax-
| plan-...
| rat87 wrote:
| Right but this is a new thing. For decades working from the
| office was the overwhelming norm. It was just assumed. So I
| doubt there's many incentives right now. I imagine it's
| much more about being upset at your expensive rent building
| being 70+% empty while still costing you as much as well as
| old fashioned beliefs in performance and monitoring of
| employees in the office. Also I do think there's some
| things that may be more difficult to collaborate on even
| with remote even with video calling
| bloomingkales wrote:
| _some petty executive saying "let them commute!"._
|
| There was a day after Christmas where the team was kinda taking
| it easy and went out for a longer than usual lunch, and an
| executive got in our face about how the day after Christmas is
| not an excuse to slack off. Then the person had us a deploy a
| feature that afternoon to prod even though it was supposed to
| be launched after the holidays. The person also did this
| remotely because they took the day off (the rest of us were
| actually in the office).
|
| Power is much nastier than people realize. What I provided was
| an anecdote, but the #metoo movement probably started just like
| that.
|
| Edit: I just realized how Dickensian this was, plot synopsis of
| A Christmas Carol. Just missing the ghosts and soul change.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Good Lord. Over here in the UK Boxing day is a bank holiday.
|
| Many (but not all) organisations take the week of Christmas
| out as mandatory holiday for efficiency reasons (close
| building, save heat &c).
| NewJazz wrote:
| We had an RTO mandate in the last year. Amongst our top 10
| compensated employees, at least half were out of the office for
| the last three months (we go in one week per month). I tried not
| to freak out and catastrophize whent he rto mandate was first
| communicated. But the double standard has left me feeling deeply
| unsettled and bitter. And I just know one exec who has been on
| leave for months is going to roll back in and complain that his
| pet projects aren't coming along like he told the board they
| already had. He is oversees over half the technical folks and has
| very little technical skills of his own. I might bring champagne
| to work the day after he leaves.
| mccoyb wrote:
| "Disconnected" feels like "has no empathy".
|
| Is it really so hard to imagine the struggles of someone who
| doesn't have any of the benefits listed in the post?
|
| Just sitting down and doing a quick calculation would immediately
| reveal time allocation dilemmas of prioritizing "return to
| office" for someone who doesn't have the benefits.
|
| Time is universally valuable! But even more so for someone who
| ... has significantly less of it because they can't hire legions
| of staff to manage their lives?
|
| "What if I didn't have this? How would that make me feel?" Pretty
| depressing. Empathy can't run the business -- but surely it is
| correlated with strong team cohesion and performance?
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I mean we're talking about a self-selected group of people
| who've chosen money over... nearly everything else. I do think
| it's hard for them to empathize because nothing in their
| existence encourages them to do so. They're richly rewarded for
| their choices and we all just go along with it.
| techpeach wrote:
| I think the problem is that like the business culture in the US
| is so cutthroat and stressful, and people generally so self-
| centered. That like, they literally can't imagine a type of
| life or stress that isn't solved by muscle through it or work
| more or whatever.
|
| You also end up in these bubbles where you literally can't
| empathize with people because you have no experience to fall
| back on.
|
| Combine that with a sort of media and religious culture that
| will tell you you're right to feel that way.
|
| I've hear rich people complain about the fact that rich people
| are people to, d that poor people don't appreciate them enough.
|
| And actually, I think this is a common thread these days, that
| essentially the world's problems are caused by the fact that
| rich people don't have enough power and aren't trusted enough
| by society. Marc Andreesen implied this in his Joe Rogan
| interview.
| codr7 wrote:
| Have they ever claimed otherwise?
|
| It's not like they have a choice, gaslighting the general
| population is their only hope of staying on top/alive.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I've said it here many times now, but Robert Sapolsky
| identified inequality as one of the highest causes of stress
| in any given primate society. Even for those at the top.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| CXOs only need to have empathy with the shareholders, not the
| resources (us).
|
| How does someone make others care about him/her? Hmmm...
| codr7 wrote:
| By refusing to play along in great numbers, always.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah that's a good start.
| II2II wrote:
| > Is it really so hard to imagine the struggles of someone who
| doesn't have any of the benefits listed in the post?
|
| Yes, it is hard. While you can break down the struggles to
| analyze them, actually understanding their emotional impact is
| a whole different story.
|
| > Empathy can't run the business -- but surely it is correlated
| with strong team cohesion and performance?
|
| As someone who has recently shifted towards managing people, I
| am facing two big struggles: how to be empathetic without
| taking on their emotional burdens and how to respect their
| situation in life while ensuring they respect their
| responsibilities in the work place. And this is management at a
| very low level in the hierarchy. There isn't terribly much that
| separates myself from them.
|
| I'm not suggesting that there is no role for empathy in a
| business. Apparently the person who came before me lacked it
| and survived ten weeks. I'm simply suggesting that it is
| difficult to balance.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The only issue here is that many of the employees in question can
| likewise afford a weekly cleaner, to have groceries delivered and
| cooked meals delivered regularly. They can also live close to the
| office if they wish.
|
| I think the issue is just that fundamental difference between
| what the work of relevant people comprises -- moreso than class.
| Managers, executives, and so on are "social workers": their job
| is to align people, brainstorm ideas, communicate, "govern" etc.
|
| "Knowledge workers" job is, in large part, to think alone, then
| to create alone -- and when that fails seek some minimal
| intervention by another knowledge worker to resolve an issue.
|
| "The Office" is not well-designed for knowledge work -- it's
| design for "social work". It's born of an era when manual workers
| worked in factories, and "social workers" worked in offices --
| and "knowledge workers" were in academia, in the basement or some
| hidden (, silent) back office.
|
| Reducing this to class seems to miss the point. Will anyone ever
| just recognise what the job of creative knowledge work is? Is it
| so incomprehensible? In the quest to "comprehend" it, we're told
| its our lack of maids which burden us so.
|
| It's kinda laughable. A maid is no help if you won't STFU.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| This is really well put. Those who's main job is email,
| meetings and the occassional spreadsheet can't understand why
| those who do something technical must have significant time
| alone to work through a problem
| mjburgess wrote:
| HN seems to prefer treating this is a failure to empathise
| with home-life, rather than work-life. The almost rich are,
| as ever, incensed.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| You unintentionally strike at the heart of why I'm never
| completely on board with these anti-office discussions.
|
| Commute sucks, cubicles are worse than useless; you won't get
| any argument from me on either of these.
|
| But I also know how crucial it is for academia to talk with
| colleagues. Email kind of works. Video calls kind of work a bit
| more. But nothing beats knocking on the door of the office next
| to you. (Whether it's polite to announce yourself by e.g. email
| first depends on the country; even if you just show up and
| you're turned away, that'll be until lunch or at worst until
| the next day.) And the post-seminar atmosphere of everybody
| talking chaotically to each other with their minds buzzing as
| others put away their papers, chairs, etc., thus far stays
| unreplicated by any technological means.
|
| I guess what I want to say is, the more speculative your ideas
| are, the more important it becomes to bounce them off people in
| spontaneous conversation. And any friction (scheduling, calls,
| etc.) you add will significantly reduce the amount of
| spontaneous conversation you are going to have. So far, we
| haven't figured out a better way than roughly everybody
| involved being in roughly the same place roughly all the time.
| That saddens me, given how much I hate commuting.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I suspect if office workers had offices, we'd be in quite a
| different situation.
|
| There's a certain sort of knowledge worker who wants to
| impress upon the others how communal, conversational, and
| social their job "really is!" --- but these are people who
| are likewise not empathetic with the managerial class. All
| you're really saying is in 20 hours of thinking a week, and
| 20 hours of typing --- some 2 with others might really help.
| I don't disagree.
|
| The problem is the "social work" class do not have very much
| to think about -- their job is to align very rudimentary
| thoughts from a pool of people who need to negotiate their
| positions. The Grand Plan of an executive-type is a search
| through a paddling pool of combinatorial options. This isn't
| to trivialise the work, so much to point out its an
| _operational_ and socio-logistical task.
|
| Yes, conversing with one's knowledge-worker peers can speed
| things up a lot, advance ideas and the like. I am here only
| analysing where the gap in empathy lies -- I do not really
| think it's people who can well-afford maids (pretending they
| cannot) being misunderstood by people with private jets
| milesrout wrote:
| Approaching this from the perspective that other people
| only care about socially signalling how social their job is
| will not get you anywhere. It might feel good and make good
| rhetoric to make such wide generalisations but it doesn't
| get you any closer to the truth and cuts you off from
| seeing things through others' perspectives.
|
| 20 houes of thinking, 20 hours of typing, and 2 hours of
| collaborating is just a bizarre numericalisation of
| something that probably cannot be quantified. How much time
| you spend on something doesn't tell you it is more or less
| important anyway. What percentage of the time do you spend
| coding vs committing and pushing? Yet if you didnt do the
| latter, the former would be a total waste of time.
|
| The small amount of time (even conceding it is small, which
| it isnt necessarily) you spend on collaboration might be a
| force multiplier that makes the rest of your time far more
| valuable.
|
| >The problem is the "social work" class do not have very
| much to think about -- their job is to align very
| rudimentary thoughts from a pool of people who need to
| negotiate their positions.
|
| This is frankly insane. You don't actually think this,
| surely? Surely this is just rhetoric?
|
| This has nothing to do with maids or private jets. Plenty
| of businesses want their workers in the office including
| those where the business owners and managers cannot afford
| private jets or maids.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I wasn't accusing my interlocutor of merely engaging in
| social signally. I gave an explanation of the position,
| which I can be more explicit about: it is an intra-
| knowledge-worker point. Its the point of a person who,
| quite rightly, goes around people who neglect to be
| social _at all_ and impress the importance of it. This is
| a non-sequiteur when i 'm addressing a hypersocial group.
|
| The dialectic of this thread -- the OP beings with
| effectively a class analysis of why executives
| misunderstand office-worker employees. My reply is the
| origins lie in a different distribution of at-work
| activities in which executives _require_ massive amounts
| of in-person communication to do their jobs, whilst
| knowledge-workers do not (and are often harmed by an
| excess).
|
| > This has nothing to do with maids or private jets.
|
| So you agree with me. It's important not to substitute a
| position I am opposing for one that I'm not.
|
| As for my slight exaggerations around how I characterise
| the kinds of people, and work involved -- it is
| hyperboilic and hoperfully amusing characterisation --
| but not one which I think is far off.
|
| The "deep thought" of executive work is shallow, for
| those who prise complexity and such, no doubt this seems
| derogatory. But it's not. If you thinking can be readily
| terminated by the speech of another person, _your own_
| thinking process is not that deep. Sure, that of The
| Group 's might be -- and much more so than any person's,
| but each individual is not engaged in deep thought.
|
| If you can farm out depth to a group discussion, great --
| that's one sort of work. It is not the work of a
| progammer, say, who is tracing execution flow in their
| own head -- this cannot be half-realised in one person's
| head and half-realised in another.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| I suspect many Return To Office programs are designed to be soft
| layoffs.
|
| Enterprises can remove a meaningful number of employees for whom
| it's a dealbreaker issue without the associated redundancy costs
| or PR issues.
| dividefuel wrote:
| This mirrors a lot of what I've suspected. Executives have a
| survivorship bias of a very work-focused life. It's hard for them
| to understand why anyone else would choose differently.
|
| This applies to both work location and number of hours per week.
| It's gotta be hard to understand _and accept_ that lower-level
| workers have a different view and priorities from your own,
| _especially_ when all your fellow execs share your own view.
|
| And, as the tweet says, at a certain level you can afford to
| offset all the negatives of work location / work hours. No
| commute. Personal chef. All household chores covered. Full time
| individual childcare. It's a lot easier to come into the office
| for 50-60 hours per week when you don't have to also spend your
| time outside the office trying to balance sleep and survival.
| But, again, that's not what life looks like for an average
| employee.
| jajko wrote:
| You are being too generous to that bunch of sociopaths (not
| snarky, just think for a second what kind of personality gets
| and thrives up there for decades).
|
| They care about their own profits, which are mostly bonus-
| based, and prestige. If they think they get any extra by
| appearing doing first and last thing that could drive up share
| price (or win some extra points in some meaningless internal
| battles), they will go for it.
|
| They are mostly pretty bad absent parents with laser focus on
| themselves and their careers only, and then it shows on kids.
| But in their mind nobody under them should be granted more.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Sadly, I agree. There is probably an element of "hard worker"
| survivorship bias at play, but there's also an undeniable
| profit motive that overrides a lot of _those_ instincts too.
|
| After a certain number of years, handing your kids off to the
| babysitters so you can work an extra 10 hours a week becomes
| outright sociopathic neglect. Using your wealth to separate
| you from the things that actually matter is arguably the peak
| of corporate disillusionment.
| rexpop wrote:
| s/disillusionment/alienation
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's only alienation if you refuse to fight back.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I agree. Despite the the statement's pithiness, the reality is
| we don't all have the same 24 hours in a day.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yeah, I think it's worth reflecting that _most_ people with
| families work 80-hour weeks. Richer people can pay others to
| take on part of that workload so they can do 50 or 60 hours
| of work for a company and still actually be _working less_.
| Which is fine, I guess, until they're all like "why are you
| poors always so sluggish and tired and wanting to clock out
| right at 5 on the dot?"
| grandempire wrote:
| Nah. This kind of person tends to do more family stuff, and
| participate in more community events, and do more work.
|
| It's ok to not be a busy body. I'm not one because it makes
| me miserable . But these imaginary tradeoffs we invent in
| our heads are often just justifications.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I'm not following your point. I've got a solid 30 hours
| of unpaid work a week, and it'd be closer to 40 if I had
| to commute, and when my kids were younger and I still had
| a commute it was around 50 hours, all on top of my actual
| job. I could and, if it weren't wildly financially
| irresponsible, absolutely would pay to make about 20
| hours of that vanish at no harm whatsoever (benefit,
| actually) to my personal relationships & family, and then
| I'd have a lot more time and energy for other things.
| That's just... how clocks work, IDK. This is
| overwhelmingly the norm for people who can't afford to
| pay others to do lots of stuff for them.
| grandempire wrote:
| My point is busy people do even more of the things that
| you think make you busy.
|
| You think kids are taking up all your time? They have
| more kids and volunteer at the school, and run a church
| group, etc.
|
| The clock is secondary because using time efficiently,
| planning, and classifying which hours you are awake and
| available are all skills.
|
| Similar patterns happen all throughout life. People have
| non linear capacities and performance.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| What you're not differentiating here is between optional
| and mandatory tasks. If you're paying someone to cook,
| clean, grocery shop, or provide day to day child care you
| have time to do optional things, and people mistake that
| for being more efficient when in reality it's having the
| luxury to decide what to do with your time.
| grandempire wrote:
| No adult with jobs and kids gets home and says "huh what
| will I fill my extra time with". Everyone is busy. Now
| it's up to effort, prioritization, and efficiency
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The person who can't afford a cook and maid now needs to
| full those duties, cooking and cleaning, the person who
| can doesn't. The food is already made, the house is
| clean, the laundry is done, the kids are bathed, the
| fridge is full. They have time to decide what to do with.
| Sure, they could cook or clean, but that's now their
| choice. The activity is optional and can be prioritized
| instead of being mandatory.
|
| There are certain tasks that people need to do every day
| that take time and, if you can afford to have someone do
| those tasks, suddenly you have more time you can do other
| things with.
| grandempire wrote:
| The people I know who accomplish a lot of things also
| cook and clean for themselves.
|
| Of course paying someone saves you time.
|
| But the question is whether that's the key differentiator
| holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no it's not. There
| are people who do X, Y, and Z and don't have a maid.
|
| Maybe on some psychological level getting help is the
| only way you personally will have time (feels true for
| myself), but you have to recognize there is significant
| personality and skill difference when it comes to being
| busy.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm not saying that people can't do X, Y, and Z, there
| are people who are just that driven, or people who have a
| spouse that fills in those roles, but it's far easier for
| people who the necessities of life are optional, and when
| you're surrounded by people for whom it's all optional,
| they are going to assume it's optional for everyone and
| no assume why everyone isn't doing more.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > But the question is whether that's the key
| differentiator holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no
| it's not. There are people who do X, Y, and Z and don't
| have a maid.
|
| As with a lot of things: individually, yes, this is the
| only useful way to look at it. Statistically? Over a
| population? No, of course high levels of unpaid
| obligations keep people from accomplishing things, in the
| sense that if you ease those up they accomplish more.
|
| More to the point, I didn't make this about how it was
| "holding people back" so I'm now seeing why you're so
| resistant to it, since you think that's what I was
| getting at: no, it's about _attitudes_ from executives
| who live life on easy mode then complain that their
| underlings are lazy.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| People with enough income have a whole list of things
| that _do not_ fill their time unless they want them to,
| that aren 't really optional for people without enough
| money to pay to make them go away.
|
| Laundry, cleaning, cooking, shopping, lawn work, home
| maintenance, car maintenance, hell even managing your
| schedule--for an awful lot of executives (among others)
| much or all of that is _optional_. They have more freedom
| with their time because they pay to make a bunch of
| problems go away (and if they don 't, it's a choice).
| They come home from work and choose what to do--they may
| still be busy, by choice! But they have _far_ fewer
| demands on their time. The people who work for them come
| home from work, work two to four more hours, then, maybe,
| choose what to do. And you better believe they work
| weekends, too.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > My point is busy people do even more of the things that
| you think make you busy.
|
| I don't _think_ it makes me busy. It does.
|
| > You think kids are taking up all your time? They have
| more kids and volunteer at the school, and run a church
| group, etc.
|
| I'm not counting extremely-optional stuff.
|
| > The clock is secondary because using time efficiently,
| planning, and classifying which hours you are awake and
| available are all skills.
|
| Money puts this on extremely-easy mode, because for a
| huge variety of things "this is a problem that will take
| much time and attention" becomes "just pay someone to
| make it go away". I know, because I have enough money
| that _sometimes_ I can do this (I didn 't always, and I
| didn't grow up that way) and holy god, it makes life so
| incredibly easy when I can.
| grandempire wrote:
| I think you're taking my comment personally which is not
| intended.
| aeonik wrote:
| Your comment doesn't make any sense to me. A single kid
| sucks more time than you have in a regular day. You are
| sleep deprived, and in survival mode for the first part.
|
| If you have a lot of kids, after a certain age, the older
| ones can start to help around depending on age. It's how
| humanity survives in self-sufficient conditions.
|
| For serial kid rearing families there is a plateau in
| difficulty, and then a steady decline (depending on the
| personality and health of the kids of course).
| grandempire wrote:
| That's true, but it's only one activity I mentioned.
|
| It's still true that having two young kids is more time
| than and effort than one.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| No, from my point of view this post is just another executive
| grift trying to make people feel better about why they do the
| things they do.
|
| Yes they live different lives, but they know they are different
| from their average worker, they just don't care about them.
| Making money and their success come above all.
|
| When they make these decisions it is not because they're out of
| touch. It is because they actively opposed people below them
| taking an inch. They know it fucks with them, they know they
| don't like it. They do it anyway.
|
| As an executive this person is excellent albeit trained at
| corporate speak. They're trying to gather sympathy for execs
| and it is all bullshit.
| timewizard wrote:
| > Making money and their success come above all.
|
| How else would you want to motivate them? This is a for
| profit company after all.
|
| > It is because they actively opposed people below them
| taking an inch.
|
| In a functioning labor market with high mobility for workers
| they would just quit and find a better place to work.
|
| > They're trying to gather sympathy for execs and it is all
| bullshit.
|
| They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the labor
| market and they want you to assume this is all normal. It's a
| much higher level problem.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > In a functioning labor market with high mobility for
| workers they would just quit and find a better place to
| work.
|
| > They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the
| labor market and they want you to assume this is all
| normal. It's a much higher level problem.
|
| Your labor market isn't all that special. The truth is that
| "a functioning market with high mobility" is just a myth.
| The market is functioning as intended: The ones with power
| under capitalism are the ones with capital - and they don't
| wish for things to change. You can try to level the playing
| field with laws, but that's incompatible with the "small
| government" folks.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Oh come on, not a single one of these people is working
| anything anywhere close to 40 hours per week, let alone 60.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| They definitely are, although that doesn't _justify_ actions.
|
| Not all, but most. Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level
| in "enterprise" type companies regularly work 12+ hours on
| weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. It's brutal and their
| families suffer for it, but it pays exceedingly well.
|
| As another poster put it, it's survivorship bias. Most people
| who work that long and consistently end up with a destroyed
| family life and eventually the collapse of their professional
| life as well. Those who "make" it by and large keep their
| family intact because they can afford to make it difficult to
| leave - or because they're married to someone of similar
| lifestyle.
| zusammen wrote:
| _Family members of mine at the VP /EVP level in
| "enterprise" type companies regularly work 12+ hours on
| weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends._
|
| At that level, they're in the club and guaranteed to
| advance as long as they don't make enemies and get kicked
| out of the club (which is rare, but happens, and usually
| means they spend a year or so finding another club.) So
| while some of them do work long hours, they don't have to.
| They've already been judged to be in the in-crowd and could
| work 10 hours per week from wherever they want, and they'd
| still make every promotion.
|
| So why do they work so much, and why do they go to the
| office? Because most of those guys (a) mutually dislike
| their families, (b) have psychological disorders, and (c)
| have office affairs. To psychopaths, 70 hours per week sunk
| into high-stakes office politics is _fun_.
| luckylion wrote:
| > So while some of them do work long hours, they don't
| have to.
|
| Or so you say. But it sounds like a rationalization of
| why that doesn't matter/makes them morally bad people.
| First it's "they don't actually do any work, lol", then
| it's "but they totally don't have to, they could skate by
| on 2 hours a day, they are already pre-selected for
| success".
|
| But really, it's perfectly fine if you don't care that
| much and won't go to that length. You don't have to
| justify that by coming up with narratives that others who
| do are evil, mentally ill, or hate their families. You
| can just say "that's not for me".
| snozolli wrote:
| _Family members of mine at the VP /EVP level in
| "enterprise" type companies regularly work 12+ hours on
| weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends._
|
| What do they _do_ in all those hours?
|
| My only experience with executives is the CEO at a
| "startup" (it really wasn't) in SF. He had to have his
| email password reset every week because he couldn't
| remember it. He was furious that asses weren't in all the
| seats at 9am, but he knocked off at 3pm on Fridays to go
| drink with his executive chums. I never saw any sign of
| leadership, vision, or actual work. Just demands on others.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I don't have different priorities but I can't afford to offload
| my obligations to others.
| kcplate wrote:
| > I did exactly what this exec advocated - using hard data and
| statistics to paint a picture of what these mandates look like
| from a worker perspective - and was roundly shot down.
|
| Of course they did. If you want to convince a company doing RTO
| why it's bad, you need to show the negative impacts to the
| _organization_. Everybody seems to approach this from their
| individual perspective.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Exactly. You must play by their rules.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If you want to convince a company doing RTO why it's bad,
| you need to show the negative impacts to the _organization_.
|
| There is a reason these are the same thing that should
| already be obvious: If you want people to take a job that
| costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay them
| more. If you split the difference, you both come out $15,000
| ahead.
|
| This before you even consider the costs to the company
| directly. If employees work from home you need less office
| space etc. That's not just rent but heat, power, security,
| insurance, internet, furniture, taxes, cleaning, lawyers and
| permits. That's a ton of money.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you want people to take a job that costs them ~$30,000
| more in expenses, you'll have to pay them more. If you
| split the difference, you both come out $15,000 ahead.
|
| I'm not following. How much is the difference? The
| difference _to them_ is $30,000. But you forgot to specify
| what the difference _to the company_ is.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The difference to _the company_ is that if you don 't
| force people to take on $30,000 in expenses, you'll be
| able to find people willing to work for up to $30,000
| less in compensation. In addition to the other benefits
| of expanding the talent pool beyond the local geographic
| area, which might let you get better people, e.g. because
| you can hire someone in Boston who wants to stay in
| Boston, without opening an office there.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Something has gone seriously wrong in your thinking. You
| appear to be attempting to subtract two unrelated
| quantities from each other. Let's try this another way:
|
| In scenario A, Jim holds a remote job at Omnicorp.
|
| In scenario B1, nothing changes.
|
| In scenario B2, Jim is transferred into a job with the
| same responsibilities that is not remote. This raises
| Jim's expenses by $2,500 a month. It also raises
| Omnicorp's revenue by $X per month. X is the value you
| forgot to consider. What is it?
|
| If, for example, it is -$500, then the total cost of
| transferring Jim is $36,000 per year. If we split that
| difference evenly between Jim and Omnicorp, Jim will
| receive a $12,000 raise... but Omnicorp will suffer a net
| loss of $18,000 per year, so it's hard to see why this
| would happen or who it helps.
|
| If it's +$1,000, then the total cost of transferring Jim
| is $18,000 per year. Splitting that difference evenly
| means Jim gets a $21,000 raise, but again there is no
| reason this would actually take place, because the
| company is paying $21,000 a year in order to receive
| $12,000. Or, viewed another way, the transfer destroys
| value and you shouldn't expect it to happen.
|
| If X is +$3,000, then the total cost of transferring Jim
| is -$6,000 per year. At this point the transfer makes
| sense and it should happen. Splitting the difference
| evenly means Jim will get a $33,000 raise.
|
| At no point does it make any sense to consider leaving
| Jim where he is and giving him a $15,000 raise.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It also raises Omnicorp's revenue by $X per month. X is
| the value you forgot to consider. What is it?
|
| It is quite possibly a negative number. Remember that
| forcing Jim to show up to an office requires you to have
| an office, which is a huge, major expense that could
| easily overcome the benefits of having Jim in the office
| instead of at home. But let's continue with your
| assumption that it's of some actual value to the company:
|
| > If, for example, it is -$500, then the total cost of
| transferring Jim is $36,000 per year. If we split that
| difference evenly between Jim and Omnicorp, Jim will
| receive a $12,000 raise... but Omnicorp will suffer a net
| loss of $18,000 per year, so it's hard to see why this
| would happen or who it helps.
|
| This is the part where you're confused.
|
| Suppose that Jim refuses to work from home for less than
| $8000/mo and refuses to work from the office for less
| than $10500/mo, because his incremental cost of working
| from the office is $2500/mo. Meanwhile the company values
| Jim working from the office at $500/mo. Since $500 is
| less than $2500, it does not make sense for Jim to work
| from the office, instead it makes sense for the company
| to pay Jim somewhere between $8000/mo and $10000/mo to
| work from home, because any of those numbers make both of
| them no worse off than paying Jim $10500/mo to work from
| the office. This does not depend on what Jim is
| _currently_ being paid or even whether he is currently
| working from home.
|
| If the value to the company of having Jim work from the
| office instead of from home is $3000/mo then the company
| should offer Jim anywhere between $10500/mo and $11000/mo
| to work from the office, for the same reason. But since
| $3000/mo is $36,000/year _on top of their expenses for
| maintaining an office_ , that value to an ordinary
| company of having Jim work from the office is implausibly
| high.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > There is a reason these are the same thing that should
| already be obvious: If you want people to take a job that
| costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay
| them more. If you split the difference, you both come out
| $15,000 ahead.
|
| Sorry to be blunt, but I think this is incredibly naive
| given the current market. Since the explosion of remote
| work I've seen a _ton_ of offshoring to excellent software
| developers in Latin American and Europe. There is
| absolutely zero benefit to paying an American salary in
| those situations because everyone is remote anyway (and
| there is enough timezone overlap that everyone can work
| roughly the same hours).
|
| Workers will simply get fired if they don't come in and
| execs really want RTO, they're not going to get paid more.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Workers will simply get fired if they don't come in and
| execs really want RTO, they're not going to get paid
| more.
|
| If execs really want RTO then people will _quit_ and they
| 'll have to hire new people, pay retraining costs, pay
| them more because other companies are still offering WFH,
| lose out on all those lower cost workers in Latin America
| (or Texas or Virginia) and still be paying millions of
| dollars for office space their employees don't even want
| to be in.
| kcplate wrote:
| I think your reasoning is flawed because there is no fixed
| RTO cost to every employees commute and physical location
| (which I am assuming you mean by their expenses).
|
| You could have 2 employees doing the same job, but one
| (Joe) has a 5 minute walk as their commute and the other
| (John) has a 50 minute drive in a personal vehicle. If
| there are enough Joe's around to fill your roles, the costs
| associated with the Johns commutes don't matter to the
| organization.
|
| Facilities costs are actually pretty minor in the grand
| scheme of things...especially if your company has other
| roles that cannot be done remote. Incremental office space
| costs are minimal.
|
| Your only hope to win the debate is to demonstrate with
| _real_ productivity data. Perhaps things like demonstrating
| reduced sick time, turnover rate decreases, etc.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This is why RTO will end. It was ending before the pandemic.
| The cost to the organization is money. They subsidize the
| employees ability to sit in chair and drink water and use the
| bathroom. This is a very high cost at any organization. The
| reason given it's necessary is CEO has vibes that it's
| better. This works for a while but in the end it's real money
| spent on questionable benefits.
|
| Before the pandemic there was a big push to reduce occupancy
| costs and get roles that did not need to sit in an office to
| subsidize their own offices, just like BYOD - but the dollars
| involved were orders of magnitude better than BYOD. During
| the pandemic we proved the costs came at the cost of net
| productivity on average. The reaction we see now is one
| against a cultural change that is off putting to people who
| succeeded in a specific emergent reality - the office
| culture. A 60 year old CEO has trouble using zoom because
| they didn't grow up using it. They don't know how to be
| effective over a remote relationship because they have
| developed exceptionally effective in person skills - that's
| why they are where they are. They simply can not accept or
| fathom a world that is different than that. So they invent
| hand waving bullshit not based on data.
|
| But economics wins based on data sooner or later. It is
| better share holder value to eliminate occupancy costs
| aggressive and offload the occupancy per employee to the
| employee. The company effectively gets free facilities in
| this scenario. There is no way the marginal per employee
| value of in person vibes out paces the marginal cost to
| shelter their bodies during the work day. The vibes thing is
| managed through adaptation.
|
| Finally there's this meme the Dimon and Trump and others use
| of people not working when working remotely. First that's not
| true, second if it's is, that's a performance issue. Since
| when did we stop measuring performance ? The in office or not
| in office simply isn't a productivity variable but not
| working and working during the work day is.
|
| RTO is a cultural thing and you'll never convince the
| executives of today by any argument conceivable because
| you're telling them the sky is green when they know it's
| blue. It doesn't matter that in this case it's not objective
| like the color of the sky. It FEELS objectively true.
|
| However the economics will change, and the leadership will
| age away, and one day; maybe when the kids who graduated
| college having gotten their degrees online run the shop - we
| will offload the cost of housing the employee during the day
| to the employee because it's what makes the most economic
| sense and we will adapt around the challenges.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Totally supportive of remote work before I make my comment to
| be clear.
|
| Calling this "survivorship bias" though is like calling
| anything in evolution "survivorship bias".
|
| A person with a seriously work focused life is naturally going
| to excel and I have no problem with this. Someone that makes
| sacrifices in their personal life (paying to live in the city,
| not having children or too many etc) so they can be more
| available and work more hours may do better than me, even at
| the same level of skill and intelligence. This only seems fair.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It seems like these policies are more geared towards giving
| companies a way to fire people and avoid the consequences of that
| than they are around improving productivity.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| People on HN love to pretend that no one was slacking off while
| ostensibly "working from home"
| dboreham wrote:
| That's an indication of poor management. People can slack off
| when in the office too.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Hell, I'd argue for knowledge professions it's required
| throughout the day. I cannot stay in the zone for 8 hours a
| day, so I'm going to need to take breaks.
|
| When I'm at home I can at least be productive. I can make
| lunch, start a load of laundry, something. At work I have to
| sit there and pretend to work because exec loves watching
| people work, which is ultimately not as refreshing and
| doesn't allow me to get back in the zone as quickly.
| grandempire wrote:
| Ok. So environment and social factors have no effect?
|
| Suddenly all these ideas from behavioral economics about
| implicit bias and contextual framing don't apply, and we are
| now all Austrians studying rational and disciplined labor
| units.
| dividefuel wrote:
| At the same time, execs love to paint with a broad brush that
| _everyone_ working from home is slacking off... while also not
| sharing any data about how many people are being lazy.
|
| Either your performance management can catch lazy employees or
| it can't. If it can't, then that's what you should be fixing.
| mercwear wrote:
| Or maybe they just don't feel like they need to state the
| obvious?
|
| We all know some people slack off, they find ways to do it in
| office too.
| watwut wrote:
| Slacking off is super easy in the office. You just have to
| spend a lot of time there, you can drag meetings forever, goof
| off behind computer - even if the screen is visible. But bonus
| if it is not visible.
| flerchin wrote:
| Our metrics went up, and stayed elevated. Do you not have
| metrics? Those metrics will slide when RTO in invoked.
| matwood wrote:
| Years before COVID or WFH was a thing, I knew a guy at work who
| played some MMO literally all day. He was also the main
| sysadmin and always got all of his work done on time.
|
| But yes, people can slack off anywhere. 'Butts in seats' is one
| of the laziest metrics for management to use for 'working'.
| grandempire wrote:
| "I know a guy who slacked off in the office", is not evidence
| that it's better or worse.
| snozolli wrote:
| I remember reading about SysAdmins who wrote mods for MUDs
| (Multi-User Dungeons, like a text-based MMO) to give them
| system status notifications in-game. For example, "a pigeon
| arrives with a note: Server 3 is down".
|
| Plenty of jobs are intermittently high-demand and high-stakes
| while leaving a ton of free time throughout the day.
| matwood wrote:
| I knew a sysadmin at a _different_ job who did that. And
| since MUDs were text, many in the office at the time had no
| idea what was on his screen.
|
| And to your point about high-demand/high-stakes, at the
| same job as the MUD guy there was an old guy. He would
| leave before lunch go play tennis, nap under his desk in
| his cube, etc... I asked one of the other young people one
| day (I was still in college), what the old guy did.
| Apparently he was the only one who knew how to code a
| certain system, and he was only there to do that job when
| the system needed a change or had a problem.
| radnor wrote:
| All my former co-workers who slacked off don't work at my
| company any more. It was painfully obvious who was working and
| who was not.
| ohgr wrote:
| Anon for obvious reasons. I'm one of the few full time home
| workers at my org. I slack off all the time. I mean literally I
| did an hour of work on Friday.
|
| But this was a complete restart of something two of my in-
| office colleagues fucked up over the space of 2 weeks.
|
| The problem in orgs is shit people, not working from home.
| anti-soyboy wrote:
| My boy got triggered
| chasd00 wrote:
| I've been wfh long before covid. I work in consulting so the
| metric is very easy. If a percentage of your time (typically
| 75-80%) isn't billed to a client that yields a predefined
| margin then you're fired. It seems brutal but it's humane in a
| way. As long as I'm profitable to the firm they don't care what
| I do or how I do it.
| olyjohn wrote:
| People like you pretend that people in the office never slack
| off.
| farts_mckensy wrote:
| People slack off no matter their location, and managers
| generally don't care as long as they do the basics.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Where I work we are all remote and executives have to beg for a
| potty break because they are so busy. If you slack off when
| remote, you are probably worse in the office. WFH vs the office
| has nothing to do with a person's work ethic and dedication.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Why do you care if people slack off? That's the company's
| problem
| barbazoo wrote:
| > If you need to influence an executive where their experiences
| may be out of touch with your reality, help them see the impact
| through stories, videos, and data.
|
| > Remember, they live literally in another world. This doesn't
| necessarily make them evil, just disconnected. I do not want to
| be "out of touch" but it is important to acknowledge that this
| does happen over time.
|
| No they don't. We all live in the same world and it's everyone's
| responsibility to realize that and our impact on those around us
| as well as our environment. The ruling class' personality
| disorders (detaching from the common folk) are primarily their
| problems and should be dealt with by them, not worked around by
| us.
| mccoyb wrote:
| "Try and convince them that you're not an animal"
|
| Depressingly laughable suggestion.
|
| Giving Jared (from Silicon Valley) suggesting "scream your name
| to your attacker so they are forced to recognize you are human"
| vibes.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| This is just an executive trying to gather sympathy for
| themselves, and make others "empathize" with their decisions.
|
| But it's sugarcoated. The only part that makes sense is the
| fact they are sociopaths who only care about work success.
|
| The rest of it is just sugarcoating the fact that they make
| these decisions because they simply couldn't give a shit what
| their peers below them think. They know it fucks with them and
| that they don't like it. It's not some "oh we don't understand
| cause we're too rich" sob story.
| derektank wrote:
| >We all live in the same world and it's everyone's
| responsibility to realize that and our impact on those around
| us as well as our environment.
|
| It is physically impossible to be aware of the entirety of
| one's impact on others. One might be able to dimly perceive how
| the person across from you is feeling about something you said
| or did, but even in simple one to one interactions, there's
| frequent miscommunication and signal loss. If you extend this
| to making decisions that have an impact on not just one but
| hundreds or thousands of people, it's literally impossible to
| know the true impact of all those decisions on all those
| people. Good decision makers will intentionally cultivate
| information flows that provide them some insight but those are
| themselves imperfect.
| 2o39u5woRLO wrote:
| And bad decision makers won't even try, and might attack the
| people who try to do it for them. And there are a shitload of
| bad decision makers. And I don't owe them anything.
| multjoy wrote:
| >It is physically impossible to be aware of the entirety of
| one's impact on others.
|
| No it isn't. You just need a shred of empathy.
| rexpop wrote:
| > they live literally in another world
|
| Classic case of semantic drift, as "literally" now means
| "figuratively", but with emphasis. Try "virtually",
| "practically", or "all but".
| lurk2 wrote:
| In a sense it is literal, if "world" is understood not as
| "planet earth" or "this realm of existence" but instead as a
| social circle. e.g. "He is from the software world," doesn't
| mean "He is from a world made up of software," but instead
| "He works in and is surrounded by people who develop software
| professionally." In that sense, a lot of these people are
| (literally) living in a world that is socially, physically,
| and even conceptually separate from those of lesser means.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| "Literally" has been used for emphasis in this way for
| hundreds of years.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I mean the US electoral college disagrees with you.
| moi2388 wrote:
| " This is not a screed against executive wealth. After all, I
| paid with 25 years of my life and I got some of the wealth"
|
| Did the rest of the employees not do that as well though? Minus
| the wealth bit of course.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Yeah, I noticed that too. Strong ,,I worked so much harder than
| you" vibes.
| broadsidepicnic wrote:
| That might be so but he did highlight that he put work ahead
| of the family
|
| > Most time goes to work, some to family.
|
| I do two jobs, but do that _because_ I prioritize family
| life: I do my main (not remote) work only part time because
| that can't be done remotely, and do a second job (consulting,
| 90% remotely) on off days to make up the difference. I don't
| care about the money as long as we make do.
| ein0p wrote:
| I wouldn't want those people's jobs tbh. You can't make every
| dollar, and they don't really have a life outside work. Fast
| forward to 60, you're retired and you haven't even lived yet.
| Sounds like a regrettable situation to be in even if you're
| rich - your youth is gone, everything hurts when you wake up,
| and your dick doesn't work anymore.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Part of how I coped with spending years at a big co
| underleveled and unaware of the ramifications was realizing
| that when I took vacation, I disappeared for months at a
| time. "K, I'm gonna be gone for ___. See you when I get
| back." As a low-level IC, your personal time is your own. I
| take time off when I want, fully disconnect, and nothing is
| completely on fire when I come back.
|
| There's maybe a year or two I eventually wouldn't have to
| work if I was more aggressive about going for promo, but I
| have no desire to be someone who's stressed about work, even
| when I'm not supposed to be working.
| miltonlost wrote:
| Nah, disconnecting and then treating workers as if their outside
| lives and work lives are fungible is pretty evil.
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| None of this is surprising. I wouldn't say they are disconnected,
| unless they were already born with a silver spoon and have never
| had to live like the rest of us. I would say they know how it is
| for the rest of us, but just don't care.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I enjoy working from home. But I'm not going to deny that it has
| had a catastrophic impact on the downtown business and commercial
| districts in many small and medium-sized cities. Those places
| stuggled badly with lockdown in general and a lot still have not
| recovered from the sudden societal shift where so many people
| just stay at home in the suburbs instead of coming into the
| office. I don't know what the answer is, and I certainly don't
| want to return to the office. But the outlook is bleak for a lot
| cities.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Wouldn't this be countered by the economic boon of the grocery
| stores and other places that are open where people actually
| live? In my neighborhood a couple of small eateries have opened
| up for the wfh crowd. I can get a decent sandwich and some
| chips to go for a reasonable price within a 20min walk from my
| home.
|
| Edit: coffee shops seems to be doing very well too
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > countered by the economic boon of the grocery stores and
| other places that are open where people actually live
|
| While I think it's true that a lot of businesses have shifted
| to being more neighborhood-local and not relying on "business
| hours" to be sustainable, the reality for most suburban
| economies are that shopping centers and chain megastores
| basically absorb all the business. Places like Target, Whole
| Foods, Walmart are the ones that are primarily benefiting
| from this overnight migration outside of city centers. But
| that's been going on for a long time, COVID just accelerated
| it.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Maybe those were just artificial constructs that cost everyone
| a lot of money and we just started to realize now? "Hey let's
| support these 30$ lunches at the food truck downtown." Maybe we
| are as a society better off without these massive concrete
| structures that are only occupied 8h / 24h a day and serve no
| other purpose? Maybe requiring less resources and
| infrastructure to get people to and from other concrete
| structures that they only inhabit during the other part of the
| day is a good thing kind of?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Maybe we should all just live online
| 16mb wrote:
| Or we build things that people actually want to use in
| those prime locations.
| 16mb wrote:
| The city and those business need to change to meet the shift.
| They are just being greedy and seem to want us workers to both
| support ourselves and bail them out.
| datavirtue wrote:
| No one owes the downtown business and property owners anything.
| Free market doing its thing. They got disrupted.
| roarcher wrote:
| The answer is that it sucks to own one of those businesses, but
| things change and disruption happens. The answer isn't "the
| city's entire white-collar workforce needs to migrate downtown
| and back every day to provide an artificial customer base for
| $17 burritos".
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| There is more benefit to a vibrant downtown city center than
| just "white collar" people visiting everyday. Bars,
| restaurants, cafes. People go to the post office, they go to
| salons. All of those things are gone now.
|
| In exchange for people staying home, and going to their local
| suburb's Target and Walmart to buy a sandwich, or go to a
| Starbucks. Get their nails done in a local chain stripmall
| place.
| roarcher wrote:
| Those things are gone now because the only reason people
| were doing them downtown is because they had to be there
| for work.
|
| It's odd to suggest that people spending their money closer
| to home means shopping at large chain businesses, but
| spending downtown doesn't. Just because there isn't a
| Walmart in the city's corporate center doesn't mean you're
| patronizing Mom and Pop small businesses. You think that
| trendy "gastropub" with its gourmet hamburgers, cute
| waitresses that all share a suspiciously similar "alt"
| aesthetic, and tables full of people clad in business
| casual isn't a line item in some investment firm's
| portfolio?
|
| Guess where the Mom and Pops are? They're in that
| "stripmall place" near your house.
| rglullis wrote:
| "It would be hypocritical to talk about "executives" in general
| without owning my own situation first. For brevity, here are four
| examples:
|
| 1) No mortgage 2) A maid service cleans every two weeks 3)
| Someone else mows the grass "
|
| Just an anecdote, but all of his examples (except maybe for the
| personal assistant) could be given by anyone living in a middle-
| class family from Brazil until the late 90s.
| maleldil wrote:
| A Brazilian middle class family would have a maid working 10
| hours per day.
| rglullis wrote:
| That, or she would live in with the family.
| maleldil wrote:
| I've never seen that in practice, but a maid working 10
| hours per day 5/6 days per week was very common.
| pkaye wrote:
| 2 and 3 is not too hard to be able to afford here in the US. 1
| would depend on when you bought your house because prices have
| shot up a lot. But if you are a tech workers and got some RSU
| and bonuses it would be achievable.
| rglullis wrote:
| I was thinking more on the private school, personal drivers,
| multiple vacation homes and the things on the "level above".
| cowmix wrote:
| About three years ago, when the major state university my wife
| worked for was starting its "return to office" push, the head of
| HR gave a Zoom town hall filled with condescending remarks. He
| said things like, "I don't know why you all aren't back in the
| office already..." and "I love going to the MU and chatting with
| students about their college experience."
|
| Keep in mind, COVID was still raging at this point.
|
| Right in the middle of his calm rant, a courier--UPS or Amazon, I
| think--knocked on his door, rang the bell, and then dropped off a
| package, loud and clear for everyone to hear. It was hilarious
| and completely undercut his entire message. Funny, but also
| infuriating.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| I've been saying this since RTO became a thing. Even well-
| compensated white collar ICs have to deal with many of the same
| day-to-day realities as blue collar workers. They pay bills, have
| to wrangle the kids, etc. Yes they live more comfortably, but
| they still have to personally deal with all this stuff -- they
| don't have the money for a household staff.
|
| Remote work is just such a massive improvement in every respect
| for people with families for that reason.
|
| The executives are just on a different planet. These are people
| who embody Lucille Bluthe's quote "It's one banana Michael. How
| much can it cost, $10?"
| dotdi wrote:
| I feel like this is a huge load of crap.
|
| These are highly intelligent people. They got to be very high up
| in the food chain. They are driven. They are smart.
|
| Yet, the claim is that they can't imagine there exist people not
| like themselves? Sorry, not buying it.
|
| More plausible to me is that remote work will hurt their bottom
| lines because they (and their superiors, investors, board
| members, etc) heavily invested in real estate.
|
| Means, motive and opportunity.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I invest primarily in REITs, avoiding those tied up in any
| significant amount of office space.
|
| Residential, industrial, medical and retail are easy picks over
| office buildings.
|
| The impact is real. Excutives are qualified as accredited
| investors and have access to private investments that are often
| tied to office space and other real estate that most people
| cannot participate in.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I still would hate to be in the office every day by diktat but I
| honestly do think remote work can be pretty bad for the younger
| end of a company.
|
| Ignoring that its quite hard to learn from other people remotely
| (somewhat easier in tech because people are used to it), a lot of
| people frankly don't realise that they're basically running off
| like a headless chicken working on stuff that doesn't actually
| matter - programmers especially. You really do need to see the
| whites of some peoples eyes to get them to actually do the right
| thing, some people just aren't the type to instinctively know the
| macro picture of what they're working on.
|
| If I were running a company and had the cash to facilitate I
| think I would probably go for something like a cycle of " _x_
| weeks off 1 week of intense in-office sprinting " then repeat.
| Going into the office for no reason is basically pointless, or at
| least the option on spontaneity may be worth less than the cost
| of going, there's an arbitrage in recognising that.
| mccoyb wrote:
| Totally agree with this model, and I've seen it work.
|
| As usual, the best model is not an extreme "easy answer", but a
| nuanced take (in-person environments have tangible benefits,
| but also tangible downsides -- and the same for fully remote
| environments).
|
| It seems like our society (at least in the US) only has room
| for "easy answers" now a days ... to the detriment of most.
| hypothesis wrote:
| > remote work can be pretty bad for the younger end of a
| company
|
| Not to worry, AI is going to rapidly solve this issue,
| according to tech CEOs that it.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| It's very sad to me that we didn't seize and expand on this
| alternative vision for work. A commuting culture is quite
| terrible for society and there are many examples of successful
| remote-first teams. Worse, we don't get even get the benefits of
| working together because these group-thinkers also buy into
| outsourcing and so we commute into an office only to spend most
| of our day on video call with remote teams. Idiocracy.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Eh, I think the commuting negativity mostly stems from bad land
| use in America. Driving is wasteful, polluting, boring,
| dangerous, expensive, and just generally unpleasant. If we'd
| designed our society around walking/biking/transit people would
| be much happier.
|
| During Covid there was some surveys done on whether or not
| people missed their commute. People who walked or biked were
| very likely to say they missed commuting. Those who took
| transit were split (mild dislike), and those who drove nearly
| universally did not miss it.
|
| We built a pile of shit instead of functional urbanism in
| America and this is the result.
| xvilka wrote:
| Tokio (rush hours aside) is enjoyable for commuting and
| having lunch outside. Despite all that people and building
| density.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Which doesn't make any sense, because people who walked or
| biked could just have done the same when working remotely -
| just turn around after 1/2 of distance to the office and go
| back home. Then repeat after work.
|
| They didn't miss the "commute to work", they missed the
| exercise and the internal soothing feeling, that they are
| doing something good for the health in spite of that trip
| being required to get the paycheck, and that it's not a total
| waste of time when done this way.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Remote doesn't necessarily have to mean work-from-home
| either, corporations could provide hubs or co-working spaces
| that are walkable or bikeable. So they can still get the warm
| managerial feeling of seeing badge-ins on a dashboard while
| also moving as away from 2h commutes and sterile office
| parks.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Well the only thing to do is to lower productivity gradually and
| let them get used to it. Sure they can hire a new guy but it's
| not free either.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why can't I WFH w/ a company VR headset that transports me to a
| virtual office yet?
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Sorry but this is completely off base. Executives _know_ what
| they are doing. They just don 't care because it makes them more
| money.
|
| It depends on whether you consider that evil or not. But no, I do
| not take that they don't understand somehow because of their
| privilege.
|
| This is just another executive grift trying to make people feel
| better about them and the decisions they make.
|
| Stop the bullshit and say the quiet part out loud. They do not
| care what your employees have going on. They understand it fucks
| with people's work life balance and simply do not care.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I have been remotely working since 2020.
|
| There will be no return to office.
|
| The unspoken issue here is trust. Managers and execs at these RTO
| mandate companies do not trust that the rank and file are working
| productively when not monitored in office.
|
| Why else would they want to lose hours to commuting, and not take
| advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL areas? Because
| they don't truly trust their work output when not monitored in
| person, and the cost of higher salaries to afford housing near
| the office plus lost hours and energy commuting are worth buying
| the trust they otherwise don't feel they have. It's
| dysfunctional, but it makes sense.
|
| I am glad to work in a high trust work environment. I have seen
| people who abuse the system get let go. They deserve it.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| > Why else would they want to lose hours to commuting, and not
| take advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL areas?
|
| They abuse this and it definitely doesn't help the worker. As a
| Manhattan based worker who has lived in Aspen and Hawaii,
| Google wants to pay people in the higher COL areas of Aspen
| more than 30% less despite them being far more expensive than
| Aspen or Hawaii. They will fuck you with cost of living then if
| you expect more money they will say they are just following the
| cost of labor (which is a made up metric they can arbitrarily
| manipulate)
| grandempire wrote:
| > not take advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL
| areas
|
| Because talent tends to be worse in those areas. (Inb4 I know
| someone really good in a low cost area)
| antisthenes wrote:
| You know people can move, right?
|
| I can move 20-30 miles in different directions within the
| same state that would land me in HCOL, MCOL and LCOL areas.
|
| Moving to any of these areas doesn't change _my_ skill set to
| be better or worse.
| grandempire wrote:
| Yep. And what we see now is select employees with a lot of
| trust are able to negotiate remote work.
| idkwhattocallme wrote:
| RTO full time just isn't possible for my family and I suspect I'm
| not alone. It has nothing to do with productivity. It's just the
| economics of childcare don't work. We live in SF both work tech
| jobs. We make above median income relative to rest of the
| country. Our 2 kids (< 10 years old) are in public schools. Kids
| need to be dropped off at 9.30 and picked up at 3.30 and 2.30 on
| weds.
|
| The bare minimum for pickup/drop off help is ~ $2500 a month.
|
| Frankly I don't know how people are managing.
| milesrout wrote:
| Just do what 95% of people did before: one picks up and one
| drops off.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| What people did before was simple in my childhood case: your
| grandma/grandpa, who live downstairs in a multifamily home,
| drops you off or picks you up.
|
| How that's supposed to work with just 2 parents that work
| 8h/day - idk.
| rwmj wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/EthanEvansVP/status/1895845734177452369
|
| Non-xitter link since that site hasn't worked in Firefox for
| quite a long time. It'd be nice if HN rewrote such URLs
| automatically.
| babuloseo wrote:
| AUTOMATE HR AND RELATED MANAGEMENT NOW.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I think a lot of the return to office mandates are either meant
| to force people to quit, or to protect the value of real estate.
| With JP Morgan, they're looking to protect the entire commercial
| real estate market since their business depends on it.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The same lack of context is what (I think, if I'm feeling
| charitable) makes these people think AI is real:
|
| If you spend your entire day in meetings, you might reasonably
| think that you'd be better off if all your meetings were face-to-
| face.
|
| If you only touch a computer to write and respond to emails, the
| email summary parrot might reasonably seem like some omniscient
| god.
|
| The trouble is I don't feel charitable. These people got to where
| they are by behaving like narcissists and sociopaths. That's
| because they _are_ narcissists and sociopaths. It 's about
| controlling other people and hurting them. Full stop.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| A few years back, I worked at a "unicorn" startup that also did
| the pandemic remote work thing, then tried reeling it back in
| 2022. I remember one of the SVP's explaining how reasonable the
| RTO policy was, even for those who--like her--had moved away from
| NYC. She simply rented an apartment a few blocks from the office
| --midtown Manhattan--and stayed there during the week. Like her,
| we just needed to make our own adjustments to accommodate the new
| policy. I'd seen "out of touch" before. But suggesting that
| everyone just get their own Pied-a-terre still pretty much takes
| the cake for degree of out of touch I've witnessed personally.
| datavirtue wrote:
| All of this was known and built into the education of the elite
| wherein a sense of responsibility for upholding the overall
| prosperity of society was instilled. The fact that a post like
| this seems noteworthy is just an illustration that that sense of
| responsibility was lost. It seems like we have arrived full
| circle back to: "I got mine, fuck you." Lording, instead of
| leading.
|
| What we are really witnessing is law and order breaking down.
| gscott wrote:
| Gary's economics, YouTube.
| mariusor wrote:
| > This doesn't necessarily make them evil, just disconnected.
|
| No, no, that level of lack of awareness and empathy makes them
| straight up evil.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Another thing that makes them straight up evil is taking the
| value others produce as their own.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Comrade!
|
| I agree.
| IshKebab wrote:
| There's another factor: their jobs are different. Obviously
| working in an office is advantageous if your entire jobs is
| meetings and talking to people. They're going to get frustrated
| when they are in the office and the people they want to talk to
| aren't there.
|
| But it's waaaay less useful if you are a worker bee just
| programming all day. Yes it's still better to talk to people next
| to a physical whiteboard, but it only matters very occasionally.
| My wife found it astounding that pre-covid I would sometimes go
| into the office and not really talk to anyone all day. Literally
| would just be sitting at a desk typing; the desk could have been
| anywhere.
|
| If you're somehow a FAAaaaang executive reading this, consider
| making RTO only mandatory for the people you directly manage and
| talk to, and then let them decide the policy for their
| subordinates.
| nemo44x wrote:
| So this is pretty much it in my opinion. Mangers collaborate
| with other managers and it's much easier and effective to do
| this in person. A big part of the job is this. It's how you
| align cross functionally and lots of serendipitous things occur
| because of this. It's much easier to build the types of
| relationships you need to effectively lead.
|
| Individual contributors in many cases do not benefit from this.
| In fact it can be an active hindrance. An ICs contribution and
| performance is easily tracked and captured through the outputs
| and metrics they produce.
|
| I think the best organization will be one where leadership and
| managers spend a good deal of the week in the office. High
| ranking contributors (player coach managers, leads, etc) spend
| some so they can collaborate with other leads and leaders. And
| most ICs are optional.
| snozolli wrote:
| Not only are their jobs different, most of them have _no
| understanding whatsoever_ of how the workers generate business
| value. The age of the technical founder is over.
| efitz wrote:
| If you want people to return to the office, then make the working
| conditions at the office desirable to return to.
|
| Yes, free meals, interesting spaces, massage rooms, etc are all
| great perks. But you're there to work, and the reality is
| hoteling, no shred of privacy (need to have an ad hoc phone
| conversation with someone somewhere else? Good luck booking a
| phone room and walking 10min to get there).
|
| If you want people in the office, give them offices. Small,
| glass-walled, but acoustically private. And above all, assigned,
| so that you can personalize it a little and not mind sitting
| there for 8-12 hours.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Marie Antoinette was "just disconnected" and look what happened
| to her.
| okanat wrote:
| They made sure that she stays disconnected.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| You might say airgapped
| willhslade wrote:
| I see a lot of comments here, but what I don't see is anybody
| speaking the quiet part out loud.
|
| No judgment here to those who did, but during the pandemic,
| several people, including several software engineers, took the
| opportunity to work multiple jobs. Notably, at Equifax, which is
| probably the worst place to do it because they have records of
| most people's employment.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/equifax-used-itsproduct-to-f...
|
| This is the main reason. Management doesn't want you pulling 2
| salaries, even if you could, so they are trying to make it
| difficult so you don't even try.
|
| In addition, if WFH becomes normalized, there is a lot of debt
| floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a
| great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management,
| the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities.
| So most people that manage you and manage your managers are
| aligned against you. https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/real-
| estate/huge-midtown-offic...
|
| Lastly, and I'm only mentioning this because I think it needs to
| be said, but I think that most people who are pushing WFH are
| short sighted. If it is proved conclusively that software
| development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will
| devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart
| people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy
| costs. Anecdotally, this is already occurring.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > This is the main reason.
|
| No it's not.
|
| According to your own article, Equifax fired 24 out of 10,000
| employees for working multiple jobs. That's 0.24% of their
| employees.
|
| This doesn't even come close to being a factor in their
| decision.
|
| > there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major
| cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really
| bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems
| and the budget of most cities.
|
| Why is it bad for senior management, outside of senior
| management for commercial real estate? You think Google gives a
| flying fuck about the fact that there are empty buildings and
| that it's costing money to the few massive companies who own
| most of the commercial real estate in the US and in the world?
| No. Do you think the stock market cares? No.
|
| > If it is proved conclusively that software development can be
| managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your
| labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in
| countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs.
|
| You say it yourself, "Anecdotally, this is already occurring",
| so why isn't it generalized? Why is there still ANY line of
| code written in the US or in western Europe? Because
| outsourcing simply doesn't work for the vast majority of
| software.
| willhslade wrote:
| I appreciate the pushback.
|
| Fine, if it isn't the real reason, what is the real reason?
| Why can't any executives, at any organization, proffer a
| reason that makes sense?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Executives at pretty much every organization offer the same
| sensible reason. Working in an office together greatly
| reduces the cost of collaboration, which is valuable in its
| own right as well as leading to more inventiveness and
| better mentorship.
|
| The problem is that, as you can see a bit upthread, a lot
| of ICs don't notice or don't care about the collaborative
| aspects of their job. To someone who feels that writing out
| lots of code is their real job, that sensible reason sounds
| like a weird deflection, since "reduces the cost of
| collaboration" means by definition that I'm getting
| interrupted or distracted when I could be heads-down
| programming.
| nathanlied wrote:
| Frankly? I think this is a whole mix of things. There isn't
| a "real" reason, there's a smorgasbord of them.
|
| Why do "FAANG"s RTO? Because they're massive people-movers,
| and cities that host them likely hold C-level meetings to
| pressure RTO so that people spend more money. More on
| transport, more on food, more on coffee, more consumption =
| more taxes = more movement = growing value to office spaces
| = win for the cities. Not to mention that managers at these
| corporations are pretty wealthy themselves, and likely hold
| investments that would depreciate were WFH to continue in
| any great scale.
|
| Why do smaller companies RTO? Because what works for FAANGs
| surely works for them, too. Literally. I've seen multiple
| managers push for RTO because the big tech leaders are
| doing it. Add that a certain 'magical' belief that RTO
| means more productivity and an enriching 'office culture'
| where new profitable ideas brew - they're all only human,
| after all, and are as prone to magical thinking without any
| concrete evidence as we all are - and you've got perfectly
| good reasons. And mostly irrational from a business PoV.
|
| Is this the case for literally everyone pushing for RTO? Of
| course not, I'm sure there are legitimate reasons there,
| but most of the justifications I've heard, as a huge
| advocate for WFH who always seeks to understand pro-RTO
| management, have little basis on evidence that it is
| something good for the business.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > cities that host them likely hold C-level meetings to
| pressure RTO so that people spend more money
|
| They don't pressure them, they give them tax breaks. But
| besides this you're on point.
| astennumero wrote:
| Another interesting aspect that is often ignored is the
| government's role in this situation. Increased footfall is
| beneficial for the economy. People generally spend more when
| they're outside than they would if they were at home. For
| example, one might choose to cook food rather than buy it when at
| home.
|
| Therefore, some governments are actively pushing corporations to
| bring people back to the office to revive the economy. I'm not
| exactly sure how I feel about this, though. On one hand, reviving
| the economy will have long-term benefits. On the other hand,
| forcing people to spend money is not ideal.
|
| Also, personally, I think we all grow and learn more about the
| world when we are in the world. You get to see and experience so
| many things while commuting, for example. I think it builds
| character.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I'd like to see proof of government pressure for companies to
| RTO. In theory it seems likely, but it would be lovely to have
| a smoking gun to enter into evidence in the court of public
| opinion. DM me (joking, HN doesn't have DMs).
| dguest wrote:
| This is an interesting case of the "revive the economy"
| argument. If you really don't see a benefit, to you or your
| employer, to returning to work, you are being forced to _waste_
| money (spending implies you get something out of it). More
| generously, it 's a tax where the benefits go to your local
| Subway or gas station (or maybe bistro and public transit).
|
| There are probably lots of other ways to force people to waste
| money, so this raises two questions:
|
| - Is a larger GDP an unequivocally good thing if you get there
| by raising people's baseline expenses?
|
| - Are the parts of the economy you are stimulating the ones we
| want to see growing?
|
| I don't know the answer in either case. But in the later case,
| I know a lot of people who work in carpentry and delivery apps,
| and since the pandemic they have made an absolute killing: the
| work-from-home mandate invigorated that part of the economy
| like nothing before.
|
| P.S. I agree with your personal point about leaving home. I
| like going in to the office too: my office is about 20 minutes
| away by bike and it's nice to get some air. I'm not sure if
| applies to people who have a less healthy or refreshing
| commute.
| n3t wrote:
| > Increased footfall is beneficial for the economy. People
| generally spend more when they're outside than they would if
| they were at home.
|
| It sounds like the broken window fallacy.
| orblivion wrote:
| It's kind of funny, when execs talk about employees feeling
| entitled to working remotely, I think that's a fair thing to
| criticize. We all earn our salaries and our perks, the market
| determines how much companies will put up with remote work (and
| how many employees even want it).
|
| But since 2020, the market has swayed a lot in favor of remote
| work compared to before (though it seems to sway back and forth
| since then). And the way some of these execs talk about it, they
| say we're all spoiled and we need to put back into the offices
| where we belong. They're the ones with the self entitled
| attitude, not respecting the market.
| tonnydourado wrote:
| > They're not evil, just out of touch
|
| Kinda hard to see the difference. I, too, live in a completely
| different world than people with much less money than me, but I
| can still conceive that they can't have a cleaner twice a month,
| order food every other day, or use uber more often than public
| transportation. I wouldn't even consider making a decision that
| impacts people's lives without having at least an inkling of how
| they actually live.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| That's why I like that I have 0 friends in tech and all of my
| friends reside outside this bubble. Like, recently someone
| asked me for help, because he didn't have enough money to pay
| the taxes. Like holy crap, this is unthinkable in tech, but
| totally normal outside.
| JackFr wrote:
| When I plead with my direct reports to please comply with the
| company policy of in the office 3 days a week, and I am deluged
| with a flood of complaints, I suppose sometimes I'm less
| empathetic than I might be. It's not because I'm rich. I am not.
| I don't own a home nor do I retain any personal assistants.
|
| I'm less empathetic than I might be because I came into the
| office 5 days a week for 30 years. My wife also worked. We raised
| three kids. I went to night school. It's all very doable, and
| honestly not _that_ hard.
|
| Now I understand that technology has changed circumstances, and
| what was not technologically feasible 30 years ago is easy today.
|
| But with respect to empathy, most of the commenters here could
| bear to examine, if only just for a minute, the idea that the
| executives are acting in good faith, and just trying to run the
| company effectively and efficiently.
| g-nair wrote:
| I haven't been working for nearly as long - coming up on 7
| years here. I enjoy going into the office because I enjoy
| spending time with my team - they're all really cool!
|
| However, I find a good analogy for RTO to be the case of
| student loan forgiveness. Just because one individual had to
| pay their own tuition or student loans off, doesn't mean that
| individual should wish that all future students share the same
| fate.
|
| Just because you worked in an office for 30 years and it was
| manageable, or just because I like coming in for social
| reasons, need not result in our scorn for those who thrive by
| not coming into an office.
| milesrout wrote:
| Student loan forgiveness is using taxpayer money to pay off
| the loans of a huge number of people with good jobs and
| plenty of money.
|
| You chose to borrow that money. Borrow. It wasn't a gift.
|
| The idea that people are only against student loan
| forgiveness because they paid off their own loans and think
| others should share in their suffering or something is
| absurd. It is nothing to do with that at all. It is because
| you are stealing to give money to people that do not need it.
|
| If talk of student loan forgiveness were limited to people
| with very limited incomes with no hope of ever paying off
| their loans, it would be one thing. But it is in reality
| about a massive transfer of wealth to people with degrees:
| people with plenty of earning capacity already.
|
| >Just because you worked in an office for 30 years and it was
| manageable, or just because I like coming in for social
| reasons, need not result in our scorn for those who thrive by
| not coming into an office.
|
| The persom you replied to didn't say RTO was good _because_
| he worked in the office for 30 years. He said he had limited
| sympathy for that reason. I am sure his reason for imploring
| his team to RTO is that he recognises that people do two
| thirds of fuck all at home.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm 50 and he sounds like the prototypical boomer. It's
| like the old people who can't fathom why new grads would
| spend months "grinding leetCode" to make $170K+ right out
| of college when the boomer bought their first house in 2002
| for $170k (like I did).
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I'd come into the office 3 days a week if I lived close to the
| office. I live far away because the office is downtown.
| Downtown is expensive to live in.
|
| I think a lot of people who want to work from home want to not
| commute for an hour per day or can't afford to live nearby the
| office.
| taysix wrote:
| > I'm less empathetic than I might be because I came into the
| office 5 days a week for 30 years. My wife also worked. We
| raised three kids. I went to night school. It's all very
| doable, and honestly not that hard.
|
| To me this sentiment reads as "It sucked for me, therefore it
| needs to suck for you too. Feel the pain of previous
| generations!"
|
| What happened to wanting to make life BETTER for people? Better
| for the next generation?
|
| As someone that would complain about RTO mandates if I had to,
| I know that it's do-able, but does it make my life better? No,
| it doesn't.
|
| Imagine your last 30 years of not having to go in 5 days a
| week? Think how much more time you would have had to do all the
| things you listed: raise your kids, spend time studying night
| school, etc. How much further ahead would you have gotten with
| that extra time?
| II2II wrote:
| The first thing that stuck out to me (emphasis added):
|
| >> When I plead with my direct reports to please comply with
| the _company policy_ of in the office 3 days a week
|
| Someone higher up is the decision maker here. They are
| acknowledging a lack of empathy while implementing those
| policies and trying to explain why they may lack empathy in
| the process. Yet, at the end of the day, they are simply one
| of the people who has to ensure compliance.
|
| > Imagine your last 30 years of not having to go in 5 days a
| week?
|
| There are likely a lot of managers out there arguing against
| company mandates. The thing is, it is difficult to discuss
| their struggles with higher levels of management without
| creating a negative impact (or a negative impact of a
| different sort) in the workplace. So they have to carry out
| the orders without actually discussing how they feel about
| those orders with their reports.
| JackFr wrote:
| > To me this sentiment reads as "It sucked for me, therefore
| it needs to suck for you too. Feel the pain of previous
| generations!"
|
| I explicitly say it didn't suck and it wasn't painful.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| I'm sure some might be acting in good faith. Nonetheless, I
| believe they're generally wrong. From experience going to the
| office for the sake of going to the office doesn't help.
|
| The company I worked for who had the best company culture was
| fully remote but put a strong emphasis on communication.
|
| Meanwhile, my current company insists that people show up to
| the office regularly, and it's costing me 8h per week and I get
| a less comfortable work environment. It does nothing to solve
| our communication issues however. Even worse, it feels like
| some execs think the company culture will build itself just by
| putting people together in a room. It reminds me of people who
| schedule meetings because they don't know how to organize their
| thoughts and write down what they want to say.
|
| edit: Rephrasing, I got emotional. I don't know how you managed
| to have a life with three kids, night school and a full time
| job + commute. All my free time goes to my child and family. I
| barely have time for hobbies. If a company wants to take more
| of my time they better have a compelling reason.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| > just trying to run the company effectively and efficiently.
|
| So perhaps they should present evidence or data? Any at all
| will do. So far there has been very little evidence, especially
| from the big dogs, that actually present a positive view of RTO
| with respect to productivity.
| dingnuts wrote:
| it's as simple as this: working from home is a benefit, like
| 401(k) matching.
|
| If you hire remote workers, and then tell them they have to
| come in three days a week, you had better have a compensation
| renegotiation or you sure will get complaints, because you
| effectively just cut everyone's pay.
|
| and your excuse is that you did it so everyone has to? no, I
| chose to go remote to access property I can afford, based on
| the agreement I negotiated.
|
| if you unilaterally change that as an employer, you cannot be
| surprised when your reports act like you're cutting their pay,
| because you are!
| goosejuice wrote:
| It won't be more effective or efficient if they don't want to
| be there. Nothing hurts productivity more than apathy.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > and just trying to run the company effectively and
| efficiently
|
| The issue is, during covid, many companies thrived, the sales
| skyrocketed and everyone was happier than ever. Now, they
| backpedal and say that we need to go back butts in chairs for
| reasons, but there is zero mention of the previous prosperity
| and why can't we just keep doing the same.
|
| It's a lie, simple as that.
| arkadiytehgraet wrote:
| So you don't own a house after working for 30 years and you of
| all people are speaking about efficiency? This is really
| something to think about for you, mate
| francisofascii wrote:
| Because the RTO mandate is not to increase productivity, it is
| to cause people to quit or give a reason to lay people off. It
| has NOTHING to do with making workers more productive. Also 20
| years ago it was much more doable to live close to an office.
| Real estate prices are insane now, even in smaller cities.
| Also, it is hard to work full time, commute, raise kids, and
| keep a marriage successful. It doesn't leave much wiggle rooms
| for exercise, cooking, recreation, etc. It is a rat race. It is
| why people become overweight, have heart attacks, and get
| cancer. Keynes prediction of 15 hour work weeks didn't come
| true, despite unprecedented productivity growth. It is a shame.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I've also worked almost 30 years. Even in 1996 I was able to
| work remotely occasionally by logging into a mainframe (DEC VAX
| and Stratus VOS) for half of my work and using PCAnyWhere for
| Windows based work over a modem.
|
| I've worked remotely since March 2020 across three companies. I
| don't work in an office. If you need me in an office for some
| face time, put me on a plane. I initially turned down the
| chance to interview at Amazon because they wanted me to uproot
| my life after Covid and only ended up working there because
| they suggested I interview at AWS Professionsl Services.
|
| When GCP reached out to me multiple times about a similar
| position after leaving AWS and they said I would have to be in
| the office, I immediately ended the conversation.
| danny_codes wrote:
| The fundamental irony is that CEOs + execs are easy to replace at
| most orgs. Their compensation comes from nepotism and capitalism,
| not from any inherent capability. Hopefully I'll live to see the
| end of the rotten scourge that is Capitalism. One can dream.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I did exactly what this exec advocated - using hard data and
| statistics to paint a picture of what these mandates look like
| from a worker perspective - and was roundly shot down.
|
| I ended up painting a picture that, when considering _just_ the
| costs of vehicular wear and tear, associated insurance costs,
| added food costs, lost time commuting, and lost economic
| opportunity in housing choice, that it would end up being
| approximately equivalent to a $30,000 USD pay cut (primarily due
| to housing and vehicle costs to preserve the existing commute,
| rather than searching further afield with a hybrid or remote
| schedule). I also added that, for the technology teams in
| particular, our follow-the-sun support model meant we were all
| incredibly scattered about anyway with no real colleagues in our
| local office to network with.
|
| The response was to double-down: those outside of "hubs" were
| increasingly passed over for promotions and growth opportunities,
| hubs started enforcing mandatory in-office days (dictated by the
| VP), and - _of course_ - the company 's promise to support
| minority colleagues was effectively compromised to "encourage"
| relocation to Texas. It wasn't really surprising when I got
| RIFed, just _incredibly_ disappointing.
|
| Data alone is not enough to sway these people. They have their
| own agendas that have no concern for their workers' needs or
| goals. The solution will be collective action, rather than
| bargaining for basic empathy.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > Data alone is not enough to sway these people.
|
| True. And, they have their own data that says workers love RTO.
| My company sends out employee surveys every six months. They
| claim that employees who work-from-the-office have higher
| workplace satisfaction scores, and therefore working-from-the-
| office must be better - the data proves it!
| codr7 wrote:
| Finally, a good use for those pesky surveys that no one
| answers, I'm pretty sure the goal from the start was to
| generate cover for whatever policies they feel like
| enforcing.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| At the last place I worked I assiduously filled out those
| surveys. Twice a year the executives would do an all hands
| meeting and talk about the result of the recent survey.
| They would make a big deal out of all the changes they were
| making.
|
| After a few cycles, I noticed that the top problems from
| the surveys always stayed the same. Then I noticed that the
| changes they were claiming to make were either half-hearted
| or were gross misinterpretations of survey results to push
| their own agendas. Of course the survey results stayed the
| same, nothing was done to address the problems.
|
| After I noticed this, I still filled out the survey, if
| only because they would track me down and tell me the
| complete the survey (wait, I thought this was
| anonymous...). One year I answered 5/5 on every question.
| The next year I answered 0/5 on every question. The next
| year I quit.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This employer had similar surveys, and the results
| plummeted after a huge RIF and never really recovered. I
| was asked to join focus groups for more detailed
| feedback, and as soon as we gave it, they silently
| dismantled said groups rather than update us on how the
| powers that be would be acting on that feedback. All-
| hands meetings where questions about RTO, attendance
| policies, and flexible working arrangements were
| regularly diverted and ignored. That doesn't even get
| into the technical concerns I was also fielding as an
| Engineer, these were areas solely focused on trying to
| contribute a sense of objective direction to the company
| like the executives repeatedly bragged about inviting us
| to do, to "be different" than other businesses.
|
| No business is different than the others, not really.
| Absent accountability, the executives will always act in
| their own self-interest; since their compensation is
| mostly stock, that means they will sacrifice the future
| of tomorrow for the stock bump of today, every single
| time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the executives will always act in their own self-
| interest;
|
| Yes, and so does everyone else, including me, including
| you.
|
| > since their compensation is mostly stock, that means
| they will sacrifice the future of tomorrow for the stock
| bump of today, every single time.
|
| When investors discover that a company is eating its seed
| corn for short term gain, the stock crashes.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My favorite was an employer that did a massive
| "transformation" project. They brought in McKinsey to
| figure it out afterwards. It was probably the only
| McKinsey encounter I've had that seemed productive - the
| team was both interested and capable.
|
| The most amazing was a pretty detailed and well conducted
| survey over a two year period. It showed that
| satisfaction was inversely proportional to both rank and
| tenure, and the decline started at 6 months. So an
| executive or senior IC would be immediately dissatisfied.
| A lower level employee or supervisor would start very
| happy, but the luster would wear down after about 4
| months lol. Long tenured employees grew increasingly
| dissatisfied until their personal liquidity event.
|
| They fucked up and broke out the data in a way that
| demonstrated that the division leads were dissatisfied to
| the point that it was affecting their health. No more
| public data presentation from that point forward.
| sudoshred wrote:
| This sounds like a canonical example of the reason to
| hire a consulting firm.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| My employer has just started not releasing the results of
| the survey.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure the goal from the start was to generate
| cover for whatever policies they feel like enforcing.
|
| Surveys aren't a good way to do that.
|
| I would guess the point of your parent comment was that the
| finding is more easily explained by people who like being
| in the office being more likely to go there.
| nazgul17 wrote:
| I wonder whether they adjusted for commute length. I imagine
| that IF you live close to the office, the RTO is not bad.
| Plus, if you're close maybe you live in a small apartment and
| maybe you are single, so the office is also a social place,
| and having no family means you don't have pressure from other
| duties.
| bratbag wrote:
| I'm one of those people who is happier when spending some
| time in the office each week and have said that when
| surveyed.
|
| Don't assume survey results that run counter to your
| anecdotal experience have been fabricated.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Data alone is not enough to sway these people. They have
| their own agendas that have no concern for their workers' needs
| or goals. The solution will be collective action, rather than
| bargaining for basic empathy.
|
| Yes, because they don't NEED or WANT to do anything that
| jeopardizes their position in the executive group-think.
| Remember that every year they survive, they are going to get
| 10s of millions.
|
| The cost of sticking out for their own reports is too high.
| They'd much rather their reports kill themselves and their own
| lives than forego the 10s of millions coming this year. Short
| term.
|
| Also remember that they see their current position as a reward
| for sacrificing a lot in life. They feel entitled to boss
| people. People should bow to their command because they reached
| the top org chart positions. How dare people below them propose
| anything but loyalty to whatever they want?
| null0pointer wrote:
| They do not use data as a decision making tool. They use data
| as post-hoc justification for decisions already made.
| holografix wrote:
| But you see, you were trying to convince them of entirely the
| wrong thing. In fact you ended up providing solid reasons to
| reinforce their belief in RTO.
|
| Leadership wants attrition. They want people to quit and if
| they don't have to make you redundant and pay you out,
| fantastic. You just gave them good data points to indicate that
| a portion of people are likely to do just that.
|
| If you upend your whole life and move to a hub then that means
| you need this job very badly. Guess when you're getting
| promoted next? Not soon.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you're correct that WFH is more efficient than work in the
| office, over time the work in the office companies will be
| replaced by the WFH ones.
|
| Forcing things through collective action that prevent market
| forces from working are deleterious in the long run. See
| Europe's moribund economy.
|
| > They have their own agendas that have no concern for their
| workers' needs or goals.
|
| That's right.
|
| > The solution will be collective action, rather than
| bargaining for basic empathy.
|
| A business is not a jobs program. It's there to create wealth,
| and if it does not, it goes bankrupt and everyone loses their
| job.
|
| You are always free to quit and join another company more to
| your liking, or you can quit and start your own business and
| run it as you please. It happens all the time, and this message
| board is run by a venture capital firm, looking for startups to
| fund.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Is the market really free enough for WFH vs RTO to be
| visible?
| p_l wrote:
| A market can be irrational longer than you can keep solvent
| applies to this as well
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think there are two things going on, and while I think the
| Twitter post does a good job of highlighting this core issue, I
| think it's going to be overshadowed by the "execs can get all
| this support because they're rich" talk (which is true, just
| not what I think is the core issue).
|
| For some subset of people, work is the most important thing in
| their lives and it is largely how they identify themselves. As
| the tweet points out, the vast majority of execs are in this
| bucket. This is almost by definition - despite what has been
| popular talk in some corners of the Internet, most execs do
| work extremely hard, as do most people who get to the upper
| echelons of their profession. These people essentially _want_
| to work more. FWIW, while I 'm not an exec, I would put myself
| in this bucket.
|
| On the other side are basically the "work to live" people.
| While this is a pretty broad bucket (some people may want to
| spend as little time working as possible, but I think most
| people in this bucket care about their careers and want to do
| well, but they still fundamentally see work as a means to an
| end to achieve goals outside of work), these folks are much
| more likely to _not_ be execs. They want to do a good job, get
| paid well, and then go home.
|
| So I think both sides talk past each other because they
| fundamentally have different goals. For people in the first
| bucket (again, that was definitely me), I grew to hate full-
| time remote work. I felt incredibly disconnected from my work
| and my colleagues over time, and my motivation definitely waned
| over time, and as someone who really identified myself in the
| context of my profession, that was really tough. But I also
| don't have kids, and not a lot of responsibilities outside of
| work, so I can definitely understand the other side of it.
|
| I don't think there are any easy answers, but saying "data
| alone is not enough to sway these people" I think misses the
| point, because you're only showing data that pushes the
| viewpoint of your "second bucket" group. Again, to emphasize,
| not a bad thing, but it doesn't encompass all of the concerns
| that are in play of the first bucket group.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I love remote work. It made me 20x more productive when I was
| managing a distributed team of almost 1000 people during COVID
| - all of our metrics improved. 5 years later I am in a
| different role, and it's the exact opposite. Executives
| represent the company and its interests, and there are some
| significant issues with the real problem - hybrid.
|
| Grift and fraud. Nobody likes to talk about this, but many
| people are running grifts, from doing nothing, meetings in the
| supermarket or on vacation, to running multiple jobs. I had a
| couple working 5-6 different full time jobs together. Another
| was working offshore using a family member as "remote hands" to
| keep a device connected in the US. It's difficult and expensive
| to police.
|
| Hybrid decreases effectiveness. A remote only unit is great, a
| on-prem unit is great. "Permanent" hybrid is the worst of all
| worlds. Remote people rely on tools more and they don't work as
| well with people in site. Meeting transcripts rely on the
| different clients to identify speakers, and work poorly in
| conference rooms, for example. It's also easy for bad patterns
| to develop where remote people get cut out by people talking
| off the cuff in office, or vice versa.
|
| The majority of the quality of life improvements are really
| about time freedom. You'd get most of it by giving employees
| sufficient paid time and allowing them to use it. Remote first
| by business unit makes sense too, but I think that the risk is
| the remote workers become like the folks in "provincial" branch
| offices.
| voidhorse wrote:
| This goes deeper than just RTO. The current, growing rift stems
| from increasing recognition that:
|
| 1. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Your
| dependency on others is extremely high, no matter where you sit
| in society.
|
| 2. We posses the technological means to realize a restructuring
| of labor and society, one which would benefit a large swath of
| people across several dimensions --remote work was just an
| existence proof of this--beyond that, we actually have the
| infrastructure and technical capacity to solve many societal
| problems that are being artificially maintained at this stage in
| history.
|
| 3. Different members of society have different incentives, and
| some benefit much more significantly from existing labor
| structure and organization than others. Often, these benefits are
| derived in direct opposition to realizing the net benefits
| possible in (2.) (see: modern healthcare in the united states).
|
| Remote work during covid was a crack in the glass. External
| factors _forced_ the C-suite and their ilk to make concessions
| that showed that the current labor structure is antiquated and
| that it persists mostly for the benefit of the few at the expense
| of the many. The psychopathy of the executives lies in their
| desire to make this structure persist. RTO mandates are an
| irrational attempt to brute-force rollback the tiny bit of power
| they gave up to the masses during covid. CEOs are evil. They are
| evil because they perpetuate a system of labor that increases
| inequality and puts most people under unnecessary duress because
| of an artificially imposed scarcity. It is not a "difference in
| lifestyle" that makes this class of people repulsive. It is their
| continual and persistent attempts to preserve a structure that
| demeans and subjugates human beings. They do this actively, and
| effectively by spreading "free-market" propaganda and continually
| steering the conversation away from the realization of a more
| equitable society, which is already technologically feasible.
| milesrout wrote:
| Your way of looking at things is fundamentally broken. You will
| never understand society or other people if your analysis is
| that we could transform society with technology but we choose
| not to because... some people are just evil and don't want to.
|
| The reality is that remote work meant a massive drop in
| productivity. It sucks if you are one of the few that is
| equally or more productive at home than at work. If you are,
| then you are few and far between. Most people working from home
| do sweet FA. Everyone knows this and everyone talked about it
| constantly for all of the WFH period right until they were
| asked to work from the office again.
|
| >The psychopathy of the executives lies in their desire to make
| this structure persist. RTO mandates are an irrational attempt
| to brute-force rollback the tiny bit of power they gave up to
| the masses during covid. CEOs are evil. They are evil because
| they perpetuate a system of labor that increases inequality and
| puts most people under unnecessary duress because of an
| artificially imposed scarcity.
|
| You are either insane or you have completely swallowed some
| source of propaganda. Evil? Artificial scarcity? System of
| labour? Do you even hear yourself? Take a step back from the
| computer, stop listening to podcasts and just think for
| yourself. Or if this is you thinking for yourself, find someone
| else to do your thinking for you, because you're not good at
| it.
| voidhorse wrote:
| You haven't provided any meaningful counterclaims or
| additional perspective. You seem to be upset just because I
| think c-suite executives are not morally respectable. You
| claim my way of looking at things is "broken" but you fail to
| provide any rationale as to why. I claim that execs are
| incentivized to preserve an inequitable system because they
| directly benefit from it. Talking about their "psychopathy"
| and "evil" is a hyperbolic way to illustrate that they put
| profit over people, which anyone with a single functioning
| cell behind their eyeballs could tell you is patently
| obvious. My use of these terms was in direct response to the
| OP tweet, which already dumbed down the discourse to the
| level of "evil" and "good"--blame the nincompoop exec for
| bringing the conversation to this level, I am merely
| operating on it.
|
| > The reality is that remote work meant a massive drop in
| productivity.
|
| By what measure? Across all companies, or only for a few? How
| do you define "productivity" in a general sense without
| measuring against a specific goal?
|
| Speaking of propaganda, you sound like someone who has bought
| into the current status quo so deeply that you find it
| anathema to even think about alternatives as being possible.
| If "thinking for yourself" means to blindly follow the status
| quo, not question the distribution of wealth in society and
| to not consider whether or not we can better leverage our
| current capabilities to the benefit of more people, then yes,
| no thanks, I'd rather not think for myself.
|
| I don't listen to podcasts. I read books and I think beyond
| my immediate experience. You should try it sometime. It might
| help you realize how foolish you are to defend people that
| actively exploit you and your labor.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| They're not out of touch. They know. They don't care.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| They may be out-of-touch but they understand when someone takes
| their money. And my message to tech CEOs is: if you want in-
| office, pay more. Or you will lose your company and your PJ and
| your golf club membership and your kids will go to public school
| in a big yellow bus built in 1982 with no seatbelts. You won't
| even be able to shift over to a successful company, because the
| companies will speak exclusively Chinese. The future of the
| western tech industry is in your hands, I hope you're smart
| enough to make the right choice.
| farts_mckensy wrote:
| Replace _these_ fucking assholes with AI.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Good on this guy for having the courage to be honest about his
| circumstances. Still, shitty that this is the situation.
| newsclues wrote:
| Contrast both: minimum wage, lengthy bus commute, workday that
| exceeds 8 hours, limited or no weekends or vacation. People that
| never had a remote work option because they work production or
| service jobs that are tied to the workplace.
| bvanderveen wrote:
| OP mentions housekeeping as part of his benefits. I also have had
| an every-other-week maid service for the past decade or so, and
| for me, it is a huge lifestyle improvement. The amount of time
| and cognitive overhead it saves is enormous.
|
| I have paid less than $200/mo for this. In terms of cost, this
| isn't anything like having a nanny, your house paid off, or
| retiring at age 50. But it's interesting that for this guy, it's
| on the same list as those things.
|
| In sum: I highly recommend deploying a couple hundred bucks a
| month to pay someone to do house chores if you have a hard time
| motivating yourself to do it or have housemates/partners you have
| to spend time arguing about it with.
| Apreche wrote:
| Right on all counts except one. It DOES necessarily make them
| evil.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| What irks me is when said from rank and file it's just bitching.
| But when said from the c-suite it's godsend
| from-nibly wrote:
| These kinds of tweets miss the point. It's not about returning to
| the office. It's about reducing labor costs. It's about having a
| thing that shows you are trying harder (the anime kind where it
| just makes you win for no reason) to show to your investors.
|
| Nothing in private equity or public companies is done for the
| purpose of making the company better. It's for making the company
| look like it will do better in the future, so that a bigger fool
| will hold the bag.
|
| Don't try to rationalize the irrational, that only serves to
| promote the myth that they are trying to do something we just
| don't understand.
|
| It's called misdirection.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| We are already very painfully aware of the hyper rich being out
| of touch. This reads like rich guy A saying it's actually rich
| guys B and C who are the problem. Maybe this is frustrating for
| people like the author to hear, because clearly they have good
| intent with this message, but I'm sorry, the only way I will ever
| perceive someone who received a 9082% pay increase is as another
| criminal destroying the world that I live in. I am a complete
| hypocrite though, because of course I would say yes to a 9082%
| pay increase, like most/all people would. The price of being this
| wealthy is exile from plebeian society. Sorry you have to be
| rich?
| davesque wrote:
| > This is not a screed against executive wealth. After all, I
| paid with 25 years of my life and I got some of the wealth.
|
| That's the point though isn't it? He retired at 50. Most of us
| will work to at _least_ age 65 (perhaps until we literally can 't
| work anymore in today's economy). And we _won 't get some of the
| wealth._
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Ironically one of the clearest signals of being out of touch is
| feeling that your noticing how out of touch you are is
| noteworthy. It's like "Gosh, I'm rich! How interesting!"
|
| > This is not a screed against executive wealth.
|
| And that again shows how out of touch he still is. You haven't
| fully accepted how out-of-touch wealthy you are until you've made
| the decision to actively oppose allowing anyone to reach that
| situation.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| The rich own real estate around the office buildings. They want
| their REITs to go up not down. It's a company town even if they
| did away with scrip.
| loxodrome wrote:
| This is so stupid. Every blue collar guy has to get up and go to
| work. People really need to stop whining about going to the
| office, or they're just pussies who don't feel like having a real
| job.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| If you're getting a private jet funded for your work, maybe it's
| your responsibility not to be out of touch.
|
| If you're a manager, maybe it's your responsibility to figure out
| who's slacking and who's productive.
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