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I mean, if they were paying him 10% more based on home location and commuting then there is a somewhat reasonable argument to be made. But of course, almost no

I mean, if they were paying him 10% more based on home location and commuting then there is a somewhat reasonable argument to be made. But of course, almost none of these companies are actually paying the people who live further away more, it's just management trying to enforce their will over the "peons". Our company is trying to force everyone back into the office 5 days a week. Their arguments for doing so were "projects have been late" and pointed at projects that were delayed due to unrelated external supplier reasons as justification. They claim the benefit of people paying less to heat their houses, as though people don't have pets/family. My working theory is that the upper management's jobs are more boring, and harder to coast on, when they can't "count heads" and have the illusion of progress. It's really exposed good and bad managers this past 1.5 years. In theory, this is exactly what unions are supposed to be for, I guess we'll see from this if the ones that are there, are worth anything.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago
There may be some enterprising startups that could take advantage of this situation where people have experienced the states of working at home (and the lockdown) that has broken employees away from the prevailing rat race system that had them ensnared in making money to squander money and showboat money. The window of opportunity is very small and those high value employees who the big corporates can ensnare with high salaries are surely willing to value or prioritize other criteria for the time being. That window will surely close soon if the choked out economy is throttled back up again and the neo-slaves go back to their bread and circus to keep them distracted. You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position), but there is also a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven. Massive investments in capital assets in the form of real estate and their overhead costs that are also collateral and backs all kinds of other derivative things like valuations. For example, institutional value investors look to book assets for investment cues. If the justification for office space breaks and is sold or even leases are cancelled, it will skew the numbers and institutional investors (private and public) that divine those numbers who rely on or are even legally compelled by past patterns, are not necessarily adapted to these new or future patterns and changing realities. The system, any system is inherently driven to revert to the mean. This community, over most other communities, should realize that.
- misnome 5y ago
  > You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position) Like I said, I think that this period has starkly divided the good and bad managers, and really shown the value of someone who actually cares about what their team needs, what's stopping that, and how to support/cover them from wider company politics. Unfortunately, I think in any oppressive company (which seems to be most of them once they get to medium-large) the selective pressure is against these managers staying, as they often don't get this reciprocity from their managers, or somewhere above that, and at some point it becomes too much, and you basically have to write off the whole team as the things that actually let them be productive are removed and they drift away. > a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven I mean, we are a national facility, so the space is to a certain point already "priced in" since the physical machine it's built around isn't going anywhere. But we were struggling to accommodate new people and even embarking of plans for an expensive new building on campus. WFH or hybrid working would completely solve that without big expensive investments. All the people I know "IRL" working with small companies and startups dropped the rented office space as soon as they could last year (sensibly) and probably aren't going to go back at all. It really will be interesting how this affects things long term, but I am afraid that you are probably right about things reverting towards the mean, and the momentum against change at large companies meaning that the average experience is only being slightly affected by this year's "experiment".
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
> My working theory is that the upper management's jobs are more boring, and harder to coast on, when they can't "count heads" and have the illusion of progress. It's really exposed good and bad managers this past 1.5 years. A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks.
- toss1 5y ago
  Yup. I recall reading of a study 5+ years ago where the result was basically that remote work made good managers better (their teams became more productive), and bad managers worse (really revealing their weaknesses). I can't locate it, but I've noticed similar effects, and this pandemic seems to support it also (even after compensating for my likely confirmation bias).
- misnome 5y ago
  > A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks. I mean, _explicitly_ this, to the point that I almost included it in the initial reply. The reason they think no projects have moved is that they can't sit in endless, pointless meetings making unhelpful suggestions to feel justified. Meanwhile, the scientists and developers who actually build things haven't been pulled all over the research campus to sit in these pointless meetings all day any more, so the "real" work being done, and incident response timing, has drastically improved. Literally no projects have run any later than they always did (by initial plans, at least, they normally tended to restrospectively "move the goalposts" so that historically past projects are defined as having delivered "on time"), but this is being used as the primary justification for forcing everyone back in, full-time, from september. Maybe I'm just exposing the dysfunction of my hybrid academic/industry working place, at this point. We had trouble recruiting before, will be interesting to see how many people leave because of this; informally many are searching for alternative employment.
lostcolony 5y ago
So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vision, or seek to empower people to change things up to deliver on the vision, they'll instead choose to get involved. This despite not really having the details of why things are working or not working; this is where micromanagement comes in, daily status reports and other time sucks, etc. But staying strategic and unblocking people below them can look like doing little. Inaction in the face of delays and things, even when warranted, may still look and feel bad to them, and so rather than have an org wide retro or similar to figure out what happened and if/how to avoid it in the future, they'll instead reason "something must be done!" at which point anything counts as something. Remote work is an easy target; it was an unplanned change forced upon them, so blaming issues on it means no one actually gets blamed.
- jollybean 5y ago
  " more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership. The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard. Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always. Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making. Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly. I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture. 2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing. Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out? Musk? Ford? Bezos? Not really. There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication. The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products. Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough. In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively. That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare. Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.
_fat_santa 5y ago
At my company one silver lining I've noticed due to the pandemic is how managers "count heads". Used to yeah you'd be at the office and my boss would see me. Now working remotely, out managers do the same thing by looking at slack. Yeah it's a little annoying having the "gotta check in on slack" in the back of your head when working but I'll gladly trade having to send a few slack messages for a 2 hour commute
deepGem 5y ago
Your working theory is spot on. Coasting is almost impossible unless you constantly keep showing that you are valuable to the company. So yeah I did 100 meetings is one easy way of quantifying your presence. What I am really surprised at - companies have been blind to these bad managers and are letting them run the show. Just blindly fire them. Life becomes simpler for everyone, including the company. Remote is a win-win for everyone except the bad managers. Why keep them then. Is this so hard to realise ?

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

There may be some enterprising startups that could take advantage of this situation where people have experienced the states of working at home (and the lockdown) that has broken employees away from the prevailing rat race system that had them ensnared in making money to squander money and showboat money. The window of opportunity is very small and those high value employees who the big corporates can ensnare with high salaries are surely willing to value or prioritize other criteria for the time being. That window will surely close soon if the choked out economy is throttled back up again and the neo-slaves go back to their bread and circus to keep them distracted. You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position), but there is also a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven. Massive investments in capital assets in the form of real estate and their overhead costs that are also collateral and backs all kinds of other derivative things like valuations. For example, institutional value investors look to book assets for investment cues. If the justification for office space breaks and is sold or even leases are cancelled, it will skew the numbers and institutional investors (private and public) that divine those numbers who rely on or are even legally compelled by past patterns, are not necessarily adapted to these new or future patterns and changing realities. The system, any system is inherently driven to revert to the mean. This community, over most other communities, should realize that.

misnome 5y ago
> You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position) Like I said, I think that this period has starkly divided the good and bad managers, and really shown the value of someone who actually cares about what their team needs, what's stopping that, and how to support/cover them from wider company politics. Unfortunately, I think in any oppressive company (which seems to be most of them once they get to medium-large) the selective pressure is against these managers staying, as they often don't get this reciprocity from their managers, or somewhere above that, and at some point it becomes too much, and you basically have to write off the whole team as the things that actually let them be productive are removed and they drift away. > a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven I mean, we are a national facility, so the space is to a certain point already "priced in" since the physical machine it's built around isn't going anywhere. But we were struggling to accommodate new people and even embarking of plans for an expensive new building on campus. WFH or hybrid working would completely solve that without big expensive investments. All the people I know "IRL" working with small companies and startups dropped the rented office space as soon as they could last year (sensibly) and probably aren't going to go back at all. It really will be interesting how this affects things long term, but I am afraid that you are probably right about things reverting towards the mean, and the momentum against change at large companies meaning that the average experience is only being slightly affected by this year's "experiment".

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

> My working theory is that the upper management's jobs are more boring, and harder to coast on, when they can't "count heads" and have the illusion of progress. It's really exposed good and bad managers this past 1.5 years. A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks.

toss1 5y ago
Yup. I recall reading of a study 5+ years ago where the result was basically that remote work made good managers better (their teams became more productive), and bad managers worse (really revealing their weaknesses). I can't locate it, but I've noticed similar effects, and this pandemic seems to support it also (even after compensating for my likely confirmation bias).
misnome 5y ago
> A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks. I mean, _explicitly_ this, to the point that I almost included it in the initial reply. The reason they think no projects have moved is that they can't sit in endless, pointless meetings making unhelpful suggestions to feel justified. Meanwhile, the scientists and developers who actually build things haven't been pulled all over the research campus to sit in these pointless meetings all day any more, so the "real" work being done, and incident response timing, has drastically improved. Literally no projects have run any later than they always did (by initial plans, at least, they normally tended to restrospectively "move the goalposts" so that historically past projects are defined as having delivered "on time"), but this is being used as the primary justification for forcing everyone back in, full-time, from september. Maybe I'm just exposing the dysfunction of my hybrid academic/industry working place, at this point. We had trouble recruiting before, will be interesting to see how many people leave because of this; informally many are searching for alternative employment.

lostcolony 5y ago

So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vision, or seek to empower people to change things up to deliver on the vision, they'll instead choose to get involved. This despite not really having the details of why things are working or not working; this is where micromanagement comes in, daily status reports and other time sucks, etc. But staying strategic and unblocking people below them can look like doing little. Inaction in the face of delays and things, even when warranted, may still look and feel bad to them, and so rather than have an org wide retro or similar to figure out what happened and if/how to avoid it in the future, they'll instead reason "something must be done!" at which point anything counts as something. Remote work is an easy target; it was an unplanned change forced upon them, so blaming issues on it means no one actually gets blamed.

jollybean 5y ago
" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership. The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard. Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always. Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making. Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly. I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture. 2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing. Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out? Musk? Ford? Bezos? Not really. There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication. The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products. Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough. In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively. That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare. Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.

_fat_santa 5y ago

At my company one silver lining I've noticed due to the pandemic is how managers "count heads". Used to yeah you'd be at the office and my boss would see me. Now working remotely, out managers do the same thing by looking at slack. Yeah it's a little annoying having the "gotta check in on slack" in the back of your head when working but I'll gladly trade having to send a few slack messages for a 2 hour commute

deepGem 5y ago

Your working theory is spot on. Coasting is almost impossible unless you constantly keep showing that you are valuable to the company. So yeah I did 100 meetings is one easy way of quantifying your presence. What I am really surprised at - companies have been blind to these bad managers and are letting them run the show. Just blindly fire them. Life becomes simpler for everyone, including the company. Remote is a win-win for everyone except the bad managers. Why keep them then. Is this so hard to realise ?