11 ms·

The great executive-employee disconnect

165 points by twobitshifter 5y ago

lostcolony 5y ago
I hate studies that say "embrace flexibility". As a manager, I understand that to mean "allow people to decide what works best for them; find ways to enable that and make it successful". My team understands that to mean "I can decide what works best for me". My boss, however, understands that to mean "mandate people be in 3 specific days, from specific hour to specific hour, but they can miss if they have a good reason, and they get two days to WFH" This can only end well.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  I feel for you, I really like my manager, and he's fighting a losing battle. I guess fighting isn't the right word, its more like he's just there to take abuse from both sides. Reading this article was like reading a playbook of what my org's senior leadership team is doing. And yeah, I think it is going to end real well, for me. I was getting comfortable and this RTO plan is the kick in the pants I needed to start looking for a new employer. I really love my job, but I'm not coming back. Period. It boils down to this: let me go remote now, or let me go remote later with a salary match. Or don't, I don't care, I'm not coming back in.
nine_zeros 5y ago
When your output is "attending meetings", it's a lot more fun to be in office. When your output is actual produced things, open space offices and meetings are an impediment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tr33house 5y ago
  I agree with a caveat: to actually produce things, sometimes meetings are not an impediment, they're vital. They're the quickest way to come to a consensus and share exceptions during design quickly
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    Meetings are not to be abolished. But they are not the end unto itself. It is merely a means to an end. A small piece of the larger pie of "work". In real life, management shows that their time is packed with meetings while pushing actual production down to reports (who must attend all the meetings + do all the production). There are very few managers who defend their report's time as precious.
  - john_yaya 5y ago
    This is true, and I'd add that the more fluid and dynamic those meetings are, the better. To me, it seems like video meetings are anything but. Lots of people either interrupting each other or trying too hard not to. Obnoxious repetition. Whiteboarding is a sad joke.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Something I like to point out to people who will listen (not upper management) is that communication is not a good - it's a necessary evil. It has to be done to remove obstacles, but it should be minimized where possible. This is completely counter to a lot of corporate cultures, but it's true; every wasted meeting, every unread email, etc, is a time wasting suck created to further the goal of "communication", without realizing that isn't a worthwhile goal.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    If a meeting doesn't product an actionable set of items at the end of it, then it was a waste of time. For example, what's a better use of everyone's time: a scrum meeting where everyone sits there and sits like 5 year olds waiting to have their turn at talking about what they want to do today and what they did yesterday, or a slack channel where everyone types the same thing they would have said anyway and then meets if there's something that needs to be discussed?
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Absolutely. A group meeting weekly, a manager meeting with direct reports weekly, and peers convening ad-hoc meetings / pairing as the situation calls for it... during early phases of a project, actually showing up to a real whiteboard can be nice, but I tend to walk away from such sessions with several days of work. Folks interfacing with external groups naturally pick up a couple more meetings per week, but more than an average of one meeting a day, I have trouble getting quality work done. My preferred schedule has one day stuffed with meetings, and the rest of the week open for work and ad-hoc sessions. Going to the office on that day is fine.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
Some things are significantly more effective and productive in person than remote. Empirically I cannot argue otherwise, and I have been working remote for years in various capacities. The discrepancy suggested in the article can likely be explained by the reality that the further up the management ladder you go, the larger the percentage of your work that significantly benefits from being in person. In that sense, it feels like people are talking past each other.
- pm90 5y ago
  I don’t think the preferences of one class should be forced on another one. If the higher ups enjoy working in the office, they should just keep enough offices and meeting rooms to allow them to do that. Forcing others to come in is what I don’t really agree with; the reasons provided for wanting to do that have seemed pretty weak and pseudo scientific.
ghostly_s 5y ago
Then why is everyone I know with an office job being pushed back in?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  They are not in high enough demand to have an option.
nadsumatal 5y ago
"return to office" not "to work". Importand distinction.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
The methodology says it had 10,000 respondents, but it doesn't break those down into any sort of groups. What qualifies as an executive and how many of them responded to the survey? Given this survey is being carried out by Slack in an effort to convince companies to buy their product, I'm really skeptical of their vague methodology
- wheelinsupial 5y ago
  Also curious is the methodology section: “The survey was administered by Qualtrics and did not target Slack employees or customers.” I think from the introduction section they are targeting employees of Fortune 500 companies, but they are restricting the sample to those that don’t use slack… I think this is going to generate a biased sample. There is also some discussion of “of executives currently working remotely” but they don’t discuss the count of respondents. The methodology section has some definitions: “Respondents were all knowledge workers, defined as employed full-time (30 or more hours per week) and either having one of the roles listed below or saying they “work with data, analyze information or think creatively”: Executive Management (e.g., President/Partner, CEO, CFO, C-suite), Senior Management (e.g., Executive VP, Senior VP), Middle Management (e.g., Department/Group Manager, VP), Junior Management (e.g., Manager, Team Leader), Senior Staff (i.e., Non-Management), Skilled Office Worker (e.g., Analyst, Graphic Designer).” There is some discussion of “executives,” “managers,” and “employees,” it seems a little difficult to tease out from the text which group is being talked about, though.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    It defines who was surveyed, you can only guess what they mean by "executive." Their definition could limit it to 10-100 respondents, and how many of them are currently working from home? That 46% may represent like 20 people, making it statistically garbage.
Beaver117 5y ago
A lot of people are ignoring the real story here. 66% of executives don't want to return to work! What the fuck!? It's literally the offices they paid for. Big changes are coming.
- wjohnsto 5y ago
  I think you mean 56% :).
ssss11 5y ago
For an individual, who mostly cares about focus time to complete their tasks, remote works great. I’m conflicted because I love remote for focus time but my job demands convening large groups and getting consensus and decisions, and that is way easier in person. Any tasks which require multiple people working together, decision making, reading body language, having small conversations that you might not schedule a call for (which I think all fall into management tasks more than IC) are better in person
- jobigoud 5y ago
  The same person might have different body language during an in-person meeting in an uncomfortable office vs their home so if you use that for decision it's already biased. Some people are also more comfortable with casual text chat than casual in-person discussion and if relying on the latter you may miss things.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    What's more - it's pretty hilarious (or sad, depending on circumstances) when neurotypical people are trying to judge the body language of people on the spectrum. They usually fail pretty hard and don't realize it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
271828182846 5y ago
It also seems to me that many of those who advertise for coming back to the office have a family at home and are fed up with being around them all day long. Let's be honest - most men are bored and annoyed by their wives and children. It's much more pleasant to feel im important at work, get raises and have maybe an affair or two going on. (having an "own" family somewhat correlates with seniority and career level)
atlgator 5y ago
The professional managerial class is losing their minds. It's harder to take credit for the work of others when they can insulate themselves working remote.
staunch 5y ago
So, 44% of executives are highly motivated by the prestige of their position and the ability to directly exercise power over people. Yeah, that sounds about right.
46Bit 5y ago
> return to work Awful phrasing
- sova 5y ago
  return to brick-and-mortar physical location*
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  it is deliberate
- Spartan-S63 5y ago
  Yep, this has peeved me the whole time. Everyone's been working since we got sent home at the beginning of the pandemic. Calling it "return to work" rather than "return to office" is disingenuous at best and malicious at worst. It's likely a deliberate phrase meant to make it seem like people can't possibly be productive at home/remote with all the newfound flexibility of such an arrangement.
  - wjohnsto 5y ago
    The article does say "return to full-time office work" or "return to the office" and not "return to work."
- wjohnsto 5y ago
  The article doesn't mention "return to work." The phrasing it uses is "return to the office" or "return to full-time office work."
ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
Imagine commanding 1000 employees and seeing them on a daily basis scurry around like ants, all of whom are making you wealthy. Then all of a sudden they are just numbers on a spread sheet. Must really strip some psychological power
- dboreham 5y ago
  Object constancy
  - simfree 5y ago
    Ten Percent Of U.S. High School Students Graduating Without Basic Object Permanence Skills - The Onion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      "Well, I'd like to do better, but I don't know how I'm supposed to learn if I don't even have a teacher?" "I'm still here, Vanessa."
- gremIin 5y ago
  It's really no different than constantly checking your karma/follower/friend count or checking your portfolio. Gotta have those validation boosts or all this work would seem wasteful.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
'Executives' tend to have their own office and better accommodations as well as (hopefully) believing in the company or at a minimum have some power to implement their own vision. Employees are treated more like cattle so it is not surprising they would rather stay at home where they have more control.
- emerged 5y ago
  I’ve literally never met the CEO of my small company. I once engaged with him on social media and had no response. Literally doesn’t recognize my name. Yet I built the majority of the product his success complete depends upon. He will get massive rewards if it succeeds and I have no stock. I’d call that a disconnect.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Are you saying you don't like working below decks in the steerage section?! In my last (and final?) office job, I worked in an open office environment. One team would have their daily meetings 3 feet behind my head, so I'd have to wear headphones. My coworkers all wore headphones, so I'd have to ping them via Slack or do a dance to get their attention. To have any privacy for meeting, I'd have to book a conference room, sometimes many floors or buildings away from my actual desk. I can't think of anything my desk actually provided for me, other than a place to park my laptop-hauling backpack.
  - jrumbut 5y ago
    The first 5-6 years of my career were in that kind of environment (though not quite as comically bad). I went 100% remote but eventually found an opportunity where I had my own office, and after several months there I realized I had never had so much energy at the end of the workday. I was getting more done without working extra hours and feeling better than ever. Companies pay hundreds of thousands for developers and are usually generous with equipment but pinch pennies with office space. I would be surprised if productivity gains and savings in sick and personal time wouldn't more than cover the cost of the additional space, plus it would be a hell of a recruiting tool since such a high percentage of companies are only offering a desk in a noisy, crowded environment.
analognoise 5y ago
I'd rather quit than go back.
zw123456 5y ago
I have a theory about this, I already know some people hate it, and others totally agree. Basically it is that executives, management types, people who worked their whole career to get ahead and get that corner office, they really like walking around an office, it is like their fiefdom. It's not just the meetings or whatever, it is being a big shot and having people see them that way. It is a big part of what they worked for. This is a generalization, of course, not all executives and managers are completely that way, but, I think all have, if they are completely honest, will admit, they kind of like being the big man on campus and miss that a little bit. I am not casting shade here, it would be human nature, of course, you worked hard to be head of things, you want to walk around and enjoy that, it is completely understandable. Those of us who do not care about that sort of thing and are happy writing code, developing circuits or network designs and etc. We are completely fine working from home. In fact, not having the distractions of an office is actually really nice. But if part of your fulfilment is being "the big boss" or whatever, it's just not as satisfying sitting in your basement on Zoom with the rest of us. Just my little theory.
- pfisherman 5y ago
  I think it has more to do with the nature of the job. Management is mostly communication and collaborative planning. This type of work benefits from having people together in one place to a much greater degree than most IC work.
  - waynesonfire 5y ago
    totally, i'd go occam's razor on this one.
- prawn 5y ago
  I could see this being part of it. Managing people surely has a bit of performance to it, and the physical office is a stage. Similarly, I quite like working from home and walking around the house (getting drinks/snacks/etc) looking at the garden. That's all something I've worked for - things I planted or bought or paid off - and it's comforting to see it.
- 5y ago
dragonwriter 5y ago
I don't think any employees will object if executives choose to return to on site rather than remote work. The problem is that that 44% of execs (who are free to, and in many cases freely do, work from home or elsewhere at will even when everyone else is in the office) actually wants the peons back in their cages,and in an environment where bigger and better located and better furnished cages are a reward that can be doled out (at no net cost because they are given from supply, taking away from others if needed.)
outside1234 5y ago
I think the stunning number here is that only 44% of executives want to go back too. That means a vast majority of people do not want to go back.
zz865 5y ago
Where I am its the other way around. The executives live in big family houses in the suburbs with their own home office and hate their long commute. The employees live in cramped apartments in the city, working on the sofa or kitchen table, and would much rather take their short commute to a nice air conditioned office.
refurb 5y ago
Anyone who has seen what executive do day to day would not be surprised by this in the least. While a low level worker might be able to quietly work independently and maybe send a few emails and an occasional Zoom call, an executive is pretty much having conversations all day. Zoom sucks for such things and getting face to face can be way more efficient.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  You mean the executives that sit in meeting rooms with video conferencing equipment and a couple of other people? Talking to one or more other meeting rooms filled with other groups of people? Of course you have a certain point when the company is small and in one location and no need to talk to external parties often. It's far from universal. And everyone with their own mic and camera is way better than the dude that's always too far from the mic and only the people that are in his location can understand and converse with him etc.
  - wjohnsto 5y ago
    You just reminded me how long it has been since I had to deal with this. Conference room group video conferencing is one of the most frustrating things about office work.
  - refurb 5y ago
    When I worked closely with the CEO of a large company pre-Covid it's was 80% in person meeting. Typically meeting with other senior leadership in the company, dealing with urgent decisions. And by nature most CEOs are people persons. I can see why they'd find the idea of sitting in from of a computer clicking from Zoom call to Zoom call their own idea of hell.
savant_penguin 5y ago
I'd also be interested in the average commute time of each group And how much interruptions affect their work
jake_morrison 5y ago
There are a lot of downsides of working from an office that were ignored when everyone had to do it, e.g. time wasted in commute, expensive housing because of the commute, getting colds all the time, being forced to interact with creepy people. A proper office can be more pleasant than your home office, but most of them are not that great, e.g. you rarely have a quiet place focused on work, instead it is a noisy shared space. The business people say it is because of improving collaboration, but a lot of it is due to cost. There is certainly value in being able to have face to face meetings, low overhead processes such as daily standups and pair programming, and build relationships with co-workers over lunch. The biggest value in working from home is that you can fit work into the rest of your life, e.g. taking care of kids and reducing costs. Making people come into the office one or two days a week breaks that value. The challenge of remote work moving forward is to try to build processes to reduce friction in online collaboration and to explicitly give space for team building and personal aspects.
brandon272 5y ago
I would be interested to see survey results for this sort of thing based on office design and layout. I see a lot of people here describing the return to work as not enjoyable because they would be returning to open plan offices in which they have no privacy, in which superiors and coworkers are constantly watching over their shoulder, interrupting them, etc. In my last job I was fortunate enough to work in a fabulously designed office where each developer had a private office with a closing door. The accommodations were very nice. I looked forward to going to that office and would prefer to work from there vs. my home if given the choice. My job before that was an open-office layout where people were essentially crammed into a substandard space like livestock. The office environment was one reason I left. If I was working there now? My preference to work from home would be far greater than to be returning to that office. How much of the desire to WFH is driven by crappy open office design, put in place by companies that could easily afford to give each developer their own private office in a very nice building with amenities?
- benatkin 5y ago
  I'd like to see it based on the walkability of the neighborhood where the office is located. I would much rather work in a vibrant city than a corporate campus miles away from the nearest coffee shop.
nadsumatal 5y ago
"return to office" not "to work". Important distinction here.
throwaway284534 5y ago
“Companies want their workers back in the office.” Oh, cool…but just to be clear, we are talking about everyone coming back to their very own private rooms when they commute to your special business building, right? Y’know, as in each employee has a semi-private, permanent space where they can control things like random interruptions, the temperature, maybe even dim the harsh florescent lighting. Y’know, a modicum of autonomy? Oh, right — you meant an open office, as in a big pit of desks where everyone’s subjected to the sights, sounds, and smells of anything and everything that happens to gravitate towards their shared…table. And this should take two unpaid hours of your day to commute back and forth from by car, or longer by public transit…assuming there even is public transit where they live. Yeah, I’m gonna pass on that one, but good luck filling that fancy building of yours!
CptFribble 5y ago
In a weird and entirely ironic way, I think co-working spaces will become a big deal (again?) over the next decade or two. As People Of Means spread out over the country to lower-cost-of-living cities and towns, we'll start to see services that were concentrated in cities follow; in theory, one of those services could be private office space where you can have workmates and an office life, but still be working whatever remote job. If small town mayors in middle America really want to bring back the glory days of Main Street, they'd be investing big time in fast internet, fancy co-working spaces with all the trimmings, and property tax incentives (or whatever) for pulling remote workers to move there.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  While you’d have company’s at work you would likely not have many colleagues with you as they’d be at their town … so remote challenges would remain. It would be good for 2 things: having silly IT issues fixed easily, and that work/life separation feeling as you cycle home (which hopefully you can safely do not being in big city!)
trabant00 5y ago
There is on thing I never see mentioned in these discussions: a lot of employees take advantage of work from home to work as little as possible. I see it in my coworkers, I hear it from management friends from other companies, it is measured. The reality is not everybody is passionate about their job, office peer pressure pushes people to be more productive, it is harder to measure productivity for remote individuals, and there are not enough remote fit workers to fill all the required positions. So yes, management pushes for return to the office, but they do have real reasons. It is dishonest to simply paint them as power addicts who just like to see slaves toiling for them.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  If you are a manager, and you don’t know how to measure your teams productivity without them being in the office, then you deserve to be fired for incompetency. I have been the CEO of a successful company for 5+ years and in directory/management positions in other companies so I believe I know what I am talking about.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  It's dishonest to paint them that way, but it's fair to point out they're trying to solve the wrong problem. You say "a lot of employees take advantage of work from home to work as little as possible" - I guarantee you that's not what employees are setting out to do. No one went, at the start of the pandemic "oh thank God I am remote; now I can not do my job". What they're facing is a variety of things; reduced social bonds (not just at work but generally), a deviation from normalcy (which creates stress and makes productivity harder), and likely a culture that was transplanted from in person, without figuring out how to make remote work. But your statement is definitely how a lot of managers think, "people are taking advantage", which is why the fix, according to those managers, is to bring people back in, where they can feel the pressure of being watched. So you're not wrong in describing motivation...but the implication that these managers have correctly diagnosed and solved the problem is wrong. What I've noticed is that without going into the office, the -already existing issues- become more apparent and more morale sucking, and it makes it harder to care about (and thus do) the work. Every obstacle feels harder because I don't have social glue to make me feel it needs to be overcome. Etc. The correct solution isn't to reinforce that social glue to better trick people into overlooking the issues, but to identify and fix the issues. But that's harder than mandating people come back into the office.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xcavier 5y ago
My take is that it is a leadership skill weakness. It is an outgrowth of the (poor) management principle of: if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. A lot of executives have little experience working with/managing staff - in real time - they cannot see. I've certainly worked under CEOs whose default mindset was "If I cannot see X at their desk, they are not contributing" etc. Yes, these execs can look at monthly productivity/output reports and do the math retrospectively, but on a day-to-day basis, they lack the skills/tools to manage what they cannot see.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  It's worse than that. They can look at the status quo under the pandemic, and say "this would be better if people were in the office". Doesn't matter if things are going well, or things are going poorly; the pre-existing bias determines the conclusion. Monthly reports aren't helpful there. Really, the only meaningful data point is "what is going to make the company the most successful". And, there, the better execs are looking to enable hybrid workplaces, where people can work remotely or onsite, whichever enables them best, and the technology and practices support that, since they recognize remote is an opportunity, and that it also prevents talent bleed due to poor morale. The worse execs are trying to mandate returning to the office, thinking that that's the only way to be successful, and are completely discounting the effect on morale.
pindab0ter 5y ago
I’m genuinely curious what reason there is for women and people of colour to not want to return to office. Parents I get. (Also; why make the ‘working parents’ distinction? Isn’t that implied?) I have multiple colleagues working mostly from home right note because the family situation demands it. I just wonder why the employee satisfaction and retention would be threatened more for women and people of colour than for people not in those groups.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  One of the things I've adopted in the pandemic, and which has shed some light on this, is moving more things that would have been discussions, into collaborative documents. I.e., rather than "let me get the team together and discuss this" I instead write a doc, and then ask people to comment on it, and I seek to resolve the comments. What I've seen is that people who frequently would speak little in person, will sometimes have a LOT to say on the doc. They're more direct and less self-deprecating too. The changes that remote has forced in many ways have changed, and potentially removed some of the cultural barriers that were in place before; much like an internet forum allows a level of confidence and directness that a person may not feel in person, so too has that particular change seemed to enable some people to find their voice. I'd imagine that even for things that are still zoom meetings, it has changed things too; more agenda driven, more need to raise your hand or be polite when you realize multiple people have started to respond and still carve out time for the people who spoke up but aren't going next, rather than just interrupt and now soandso has the floor, etc. I don't know any of these things to be the reason, but I could easily see it leading to a different and more egalitarian experience for women and people of color.
  - pindab0ter 5y ago
    I’d never have thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I might even give that method a go.
dredmorbius 5y ago
What Do Bosses Do?: The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production Stephen A. Marglin First Published July 1, 1974 https://doi.org/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://doi.org/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/048661347400600... Part 1. http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347400600206 http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347400600206 Part 2. http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347500700102 http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347500700102
rodrigosetti 5y ago
Executives are more politically savvy and know that in-person connections are more effective to build alliances, coalitions, trust, etc. Additionally, they have the resources to pay people to take care of their kids and do their home chores, so that they don’t need the flexibility much

165 points by twobitshifter 5y ago

I hate studies that say "embrace flexibility". As a manager, I understand that to mean "allow people to decide what works best for them; find ways to enable that and make it successful". My team understands that to mean "I can decide what works best for me". My boss, however, understands that to mean "mandate people be in 3 specific days, from specific hour to specific hour, but they can miss if they have a good reason, and they get two days to WFH" This can only end well.

tragictrash 5y ago
I feel for you, I really like my manager, and he's fighting a losing battle. I guess fighting isn't the right word, its more like he's just there to take abuse from both sides. Reading this article was like reading a playbook of what my org's senior leadership team is doing. And yeah, I think it is going to end real well, for me. I was getting comfortable and this RTO plan is the kick in the pants I needed to start looking for a new employer. I really love my job, but I'm not coming back. Period. It boils down to this: let me go remote now, or let me go remote later with a salary match. Or don't, I don't care, I'm not coming back in.

nine_zeros 5y ago

When your output is "attending meetings", it's a lot more fun to be in office. When your output is actual produced things, open space offices and meetings are an impediment.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tr33house 5y ago
I agree with a caveat: to actually produce things, sometimes meetings are not an impediment, they're vital. They're the quickest way to come to a consensus and share exceptions during design quickly
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  Meetings are not to be abolished. But they are not the end unto itself. It is merely a means to an end. A small piece of the larger pie of "work". In real life, management shows that their time is packed with meetings while pushing actual production down to reports (who must attend all the meetings + do all the production). There are very few managers who defend their report's time as precious.
- john_yaya 5y ago
  This is true, and I'd add that the more fluid and dynamic those meetings are, the better. To me, it seems like video meetings are anything but. Lots of people either interrupting each other or trying too hard not to. Obnoxious repetition. Whiteboarding is a sad joke.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Something I like to point out to people who will listen (not upper management) is that communication is not a good - it's a necessary evil. It has to be done to remove obstacles, but it should be minimized where possible. This is completely counter to a lot of corporate cultures, but it's true; every wasted meeting, every unread email, etc, is a time wasting suck created to further the goal of "communication", without realizing that isn't a worthwhile goal.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  If a meeting doesn't product an actionable set of items at the end of it, then it was a waste of time. For example, what's a better use of everyone's time: a scrum meeting where everyone sits there and sits like 5 year olds waiting to have their turn at talking about what they want to do today and what they did yesterday, or a slack channel where everyone types the same thing they would have said anyway and then meets if there's something that needs to be discussed?
- klyrs 5y ago
  Absolutely. A group meeting weekly, a manager meeting with direct reports weekly, and peers convening ad-hoc meetings / pairing as the situation calls for it... during early phases of a project, actually showing up to a real whiteboard can be nice, but I tend to walk away from such sessions with several days of work. Folks interfacing with external groups naturally pick up a couple more meetings per week, but more than an average of one meeting a day, I have trouble getting quality work done. My preferred schedule has one day stuffed with meetings, and the rest of the week open for work and ad-hoc sessions. Going to the office on that day is fine.

jandrewrogers 5y ago

Some things are significantly more effective and productive in person than remote. Empirically I cannot argue otherwise, and I have been working remote for years in various capacities. The discrepancy suggested in the article can likely be explained by the reality that the further up the management ladder you go, the larger the percentage of your work that significantly benefits from being in person. In that sense, it feels like people are talking past each other.

pm90 5y ago
I don’t think the preferences of one class should be forced on another one. If the higher ups enjoy working in the office, they should just keep enough offices and meeting rooms to allow them to do that. Forcing others to come in is what I don’t really agree with; the reasons provided for wanting to do that have seemed pretty weak and pseudo scientific.

ghostly_s 5y ago

Then why is everyone I know with an office job being pushed back in?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
They are not in high enough demand to have an option.

nadsumatal 5y ago

"return to office" not "to work". Importand distinction.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

The methodology says it had 10,000 respondents, but it doesn't break those down into any sort of groups. What qualifies as an executive and how many of them responded to the survey? Given this survey is being carried out by Slack in an effort to convince companies to buy their product, I'm really skeptical of their vague methodology

wheelinsupial 5y ago
Also curious is the methodology section: “The survey was administered by Qualtrics and did not target Slack employees or customers.” I think from the introduction section they are targeting employees of Fortune 500 companies, but they are restricting the sample to those that don’t use slack… I think this is going to generate a biased sample. There is also some discussion of “of executives currently working remotely” but they don’t discuss the count of respondents. The methodology section has some definitions: “Respondents were all knowledge workers, defined as employed full-time (30 or more hours per week) and either having one of the roles listed below or saying they “work with data, analyze information or think creatively”: Executive Management (e.g., President/Partner, CEO, CFO, C-suite), Senior Management (e.g., Executive VP, Senior VP), Middle Management (e.g., Department/Group Manager, VP), Junior Management (e.g., Manager, Team Leader), Senior Staff (i.e., Non-Management), Skilled Office Worker (e.g., Analyst, Graphic Designer).” There is some discussion of “executives,” “managers,” and “employees,” it seems a little difficult to tease out from the text which group is being talked about, though.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  It defines who was surveyed, you can only guess what they mean by "executive." Their definition could limit it to 10-100 respondents, and how many of them are currently working from home? That 46% may represent like 20 people, making it statistically garbage.

Beaver117 5y ago

A lot of people are ignoring the real story here. 66% of executives don't want to return to work! What the fuck!? It's literally the offices they paid for. Big changes are coming.

wjohnsto 5y ago
I think you mean 56% :).

ssss11 5y ago

For an individual, who mostly cares about focus time to complete their tasks, remote works great. I’m conflicted because I love remote for focus time but my job demands convening large groups and getting consensus and decisions, and that is way easier in person. Any tasks which require multiple people working together, decision making, reading body language, having small conversations that you might not schedule a call for (which I think all fall into management tasks more than IC) are better in person

jobigoud 5y ago
The same person might have different body language during an in-person meeting in an uncomfortable office vs their home so if you use that for decision it's already biased. Some people are also more comfortable with casual text chat than casual in-person discussion and if relying on the latter you may miss things.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  What's more - it's pretty hilarious (or sad, depending on circumstances) when neurotypical people are trying to judge the body language of people on the spectrum. They usually fail pretty hard and don't realize it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

271828182846 5y ago

It also seems to me that many of those who advertise for coming back to the office have a family at home and are fed up with being around them all day long. Let's be honest - most men are bored and annoyed by their wives and children. It's much more pleasant to feel im important at work, get raises and have maybe an affair or two going on. (having an "own" family somewhat correlates with seniority and career level)

atlgator 5y ago

The professional managerial class is losing their minds. It's harder to take credit for the work of others when they can insulate themselves working remote.

staunch 5y ago

So, 44% of executives are highly motivated by the prestige of their position and the ability to directly exercise power over people. Yeah, that sounds about right.

46Bit 5y ago

> return to work Awful phrasing

sova 5y ago
return to brick-and-mortar physical location*
arthurcolle 5y ago
it is deliberate
Spartan-S63 5y ago
Yep, this has peeved me the whole time. Everyone's been working since we got sent home at the beginning of the pandemic. Calling it "return to work" rather than "return to office" is disingenuous at best and malicious at worst. It's likely a deliberate phrase meant to make it seem like people can't possibly be productive at home/remote with all the newfound flexibility of such an arrangement.
- wjohnsto 5y ago
  The article does say "return to full-time office work" or "return to the office" and not "return to work."
wjohnsto 5y ago
The article doesn't mention "return to work." The phrasing it uses is "return to the office" or "return to full-time office work."

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago

Imagine commanding 1000 employees and seeing them on a daily basis scurry around like ants, all of whom are making you wealthy. Then all of a sudden they are just numbers on a spread sheet. Must really strip some psychological power

dboreham 5y ago
Object constancy
- simfree 5y ago
  Ten Percent Of U.S. High School Students Graduating Without Basic Object Permanence Skills - The Onion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssjokgx0pUQ
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    "Well, I'd like to do better, but I don't know how I'm supposed to learn if I don't even have a teacher?" "I'm still here, Vanessa."
gremIin 5y ago
It's really no different than constantly checking your karma/follower/friend count or checking your portfolio. Gotta have those validation boosts or all this work would seem wasteful.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

'Executives' tend to have their own office and better accommodations as well as (hopefully) believing in the company or at a minimum have some power to implement their own vision. Employees are treated more like cattle so it is not surprising they would rather stay at home where they have more control.

emerged 5y ago
I’ve literally never met the CEO of my small company. I once engaged with him on social media and had no response. Literally doesn’t recognize my name. Yet I built the majority of the product his success complete depends upon. He will get massive rewards if it succeeds and I have no stock. I’d call that a disconnect.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
Are you saying you don't like working below decks in the steerage section?! In my last (and final?) office job, I worked in an open office environment. One team would have their daily meetings 3 feet behind my head, so I'd have to wear headphones. My coworkers all wore headphones, so I'd have to ping them via Slack or do a dance to get their attention. To have any privacy for meeting, I'd have to book a conference room, sometimes many floors or buildings away from my actual desk. I can't think of anything my desk actually provided for me, other than a place to park my laptop-hauling backpack.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  The first 5-6 years of my career were in that kind of environment (though not quite as comically bad). I went 100% remote but eventually found an opportunity where I had my own office, and after several months there I realized I had never had so much energy at the end of the workday. I was getting more done without working extra hours and feeling better than ever. Companies pay hundreds of thousands for developers and are usually generous with equipment but pinch pennies with office space. I would be surprised if productivity gains and savings in sick and personal time wouldn't more than cover the cost of the additional space, plus it would be a hell of a recruiting tool since such a high percentage of companies are only offering a desk in a noisy, crowded environment.

analognoise 5y ago

I'd rather quit than go back.

zw123456 5y ago

I have a theory about this, I already know some people hate it, and others totally agree. Basically it is that executives, management types, people who worked their whole career to get ahead and get that corner office, they really like walking around an office, it is like their fiefdom. It's not just the meetings or whatever, it is being a big shot and having people see them that way. It is a big part of what they worked for. This is a generalization, of course, not all executives and managers are completely that way, but, I think all have, if they are completely honest, will admit, they kind of like being the big man on campus and miss that a little bit. I am not casting shade here, it would be human nature, of course, you worked hard to be head of things, you want to walk around and enjoy that, it is completely understandable. Those of us who do not care about that sort of thing and are happy writing code, developing circuits or network designs and etc. We are completely fine working from home. In fact, not having the distractions of an office is actually really nice. But if part of your fulfilment is being "the big boss" or whatever, it's just not as satisfying sitting in your basement on Zoom with the rest of us. Just my little theory.

pfisherman 5y ago
I think it has more to do with the nature of the job. Management is mostly communication and collaborative planning. This type of work benefits from having people together in one place to a much greater degree than most IC work.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  totally, i'd go occam's razor on this one.
prawn 5y ago
I could see this being part of it. Managing people surely has a bit of performance to it, and the physical office is a stage. Similarly, I quite like working from home and walking around the house (getting drinks/snacks/etc) looking at the garden. That's all something I've worked for - things I planted or bought or paid off - and it's comforting to see it.
5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

I don't think any employees will object if executives choose to return to on site rather than remote work. The problem is that that 44% of execs (who are free to, and in many cases freely do, work from home or elsewhere at will even when everyone else is in the office) actually wants the peons back in their cages,and in an environment where bigger and better located and better furnished cages are a reward that can be doled out (at no net cost because they are given from supply, taking away from others if needed.)

outside1234 5y ago

I think the stunning number here is that only 44% of executives want to go back too. That means a vast majority of people do not want to go back.

zz865 5y ago

Where I am its the other way around. The executives live in big family houses in the suburbs with their own home office and hate their long commute. The employees live in cramped apartments in the city, working on the sofa or kitchen table, and would much rather take their short commute to a nice air conditioned office.

refurb 5y ago

Anyone who has seen what executive do day to day would not be surprised by this in the least. While a low level worker might be able to quietly work independently and maybe send a few emails and an occasional Zoom call, an executive is pretty much having conversations all day. Zoom sucks for such things and getting face to face can be way more efficient.

tharkun__ 5y ago
You mean the executives that sit in meeting rooms with video conferencing equipment and a couple of other people? Talking to one or more other meeting rooms filled with other groups of people? Of course you have a certain point when the company is small and in one location and no need to talk to external parties often. It's far from universal. And everyone with their own mic and camera is way better than the dude that's always too far from the mic and only the people that are in his location can understand and converse with him etc.
- wjohnsto 5y ago
  You just reminded me how long it has been since I had to deal with this. Conference room group video conferencing is one of the most frustrating things about office work.
- refurb 5y ago
  When I worked closely with the CEO of a large company pre-Covid it's was 80% in person meeting. Typically meeting with other senior leadership in the company, dealing with urgent decisions. And by nature most CEOs are people persons. I can see why they'd find the idea of sitting in from of a computer clicking from Zoom call to Zoom call their own idea of hell.

savant_penguin 5y ago

I'd also be interested in the average commute time of each group And how much interruptions affect their work

jake_morrison 5y ago

There are a lot of downsides of working from an office that were ignored when everyone had to do it, e.g. time wasted in commute, expensive housing because of the commute, getting colds all the time, being forced to interact with creepy people. A proper office can be more pleasant than your home office, but most of them are not that great, e.g. you rarely have a quiet place focused on work, instead it is a noisy shared space. The business people say it is because of improving collaboration, but a lot of it is due to cost. There is certainly value in being able to have face to face meetings, low overhead processes such as daily standups and pair programming, and build relationships with co-workers over lunch. The biggest value in working from home is that you can fit work into the rest of your life, e.g. taking care of kids and reducing costs. Making people come into the office one or two days a week breaks that value. The challenge of remote work moving forward is to try to build processes to reduce friction in online collaboration and to explicitly give space for team building and personal aspects.

brandon272 5y ago

I would be interested to see survey results for this sort of thing based on office design and layout. I see a lot of people here describing the return to work as not enjoyable because they would be returning to open plan offices in which they have no privacy, in which superiors and coworkers are constantly watching over their shoulder, interrupting them, etc. In my last job I was fortunate enough to work in a fabulously designed office where each developer had a private office with a closing door. The accommodations were very nice. I looked forward to going to that office and would prefer to work from there vs. my home if given the choice. My job before that was an open-office layout where people were essentially crammed into a substandard space like livestock. The office environment was one reason I left. If I was working there now? My preference to work from home would be far greater than to be returning to that office. How much of the desire to WFH is driven by crappy open office design, put in place by companies that could easily afford to give each developer their own private office in a very nice building with amenities?

benatkin 5y ago
I'd like to see it based on the walkability of the neighborhood where the office is located. I would much rather work in a vibrant city than a corporate campus miles away from the nearest coffee shop.

nadsumatal 5y ago

"return to office" not "to work". Important distinction here.

throwaway284534 5y ago

“Companies want their workers back in the office.” Oh, cool…but just to be clear, we are talking about everyone coming back to their very own private rooms when they commute to your special business building, right? Y’know, as in each employee has a semi-private, permanent space where they can control things like random interruptions, the temperature, maybe even dim the harsh florescent lighting. Y’know, a modicum of autonomy? Oh, right — you meant an open office, as in a big pit of desks where everyone’s subjected to the sights, sounds, and smells of anything and everything that happens to gravitate towards their shared…table. And this should take two unpaid hours of your day to commute back and forth from by car, or longer by public transit…assuming there even is public transit where they live. Yeah, I’m gonna pass on that one, but good luck filling that fancy building of yours!

CptFribble 5y ago

In a weird and entirely ironic way, I think co-working spaces will become a big deal (again?) over the next decade or two. As People Of Means spread out over the country to lower-cost-of-living cities and towns, we'll start to see services that were concentrated in cities follow; in theory, one of those services could be private office space where you can have workmates and an office life, but still be working whatever remote job. If small town mayors in middle America really want to bring back the glory days of Main Street, they'd be investing big time in fast internet, fancy co-working spaces with all the trimmings, and property tax incentives (or whatever) for pulling remote workers to move there.

quickthrower2 5y ago
While you’d have company’s at work you would likely not have many colleagues with you as they’d be at their town … so remote challenges would remain. It would be good for 2 things: having silly IT issues fixed easily, and that work/life separation feeling as you cycle home (which hopefully you can safely do not being in big city!)

trabant00 5y ago

There is on thing I never see mentioned in these discussions: a lot of employees take advantage of work from home to work as little as possible. I see it in my coworkers, I hear it from management friends from other companies, it is measured. The reality is not everybody is passionate about their job, office peer pressure pushes people to be more productive, it is harder to measure productivity for remote individuals, and there are not enough remote fit workers to fill all the required positions. So yes, management pushes for return to the office, but they do have real reasons. It is dishonest to simply paint them as power addicts who just like to see slaves toiling for them.

mbrodersen 5y ago
If you are a manager, and you don’t know how to measure your teams productivity without them being in the office, then you deserve to be fired for incompetency. I have been the CEO of a successful company for 5+ years and in directory/management positions in other companies so I believe I know what I am talking about.
lostcolony 5y ago
It's dishonest to paint them that way, but it's fair to point out they're trying to solve the wrong problem. You say "a lot of employees take advantage of work from home to work as little as possible" - I guarantee you that's not what employees are setting out to do. No one went, at the start of the pandemic "oh thank God I am remote; now I can not do my job". What they're facing is a variety of things; reduced social bonds (not just at work but generally), a deviation from normalcy (which creates stress and makes productivity harder), and likely a culture that was transplanted from in person, without figuring out how to make remote work. But your statement is definitely how a lot of managers think, "people are taking advantage", which is why the fix, according to those managers, is to bring people back in, where they can feel the pressure of being watched. So you're not wrong in describing motivation...but the implication that these managers have correctly diagnosed and solved the problem is wrong. What I've noticed is that without going into the office, the -already existing issues- become more apparent and more morale sucking, and it makes it harder to care about (and thus do) the work. Every obstacle feels harder because I don't have social glue to make me feel it needs to be overcome. Etc. The correct solution isn't to reinforce that social glue to better trick people into overlooking the issues, but to identify and fix the issues. But that's harder than mandating people come back into the office.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xcavier 5y ago

My take is that it is a leadership skill weakness. It is an outgrowth of the (poor) management principle of: if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. A lot of executives have little experience working with/managing staff - in real time - they cannot see. I've certainly worked under CEOs whose default mindset was "If I cannot see X at their desk, they are not contributing" etc. Yes, these execs can look at monthly productivity/output reports and do the math retrospectively, but on a day-to-day basis, they lack the skills/tools to manage what they cannot see.

lostcolony 5y ago
It's worse than that. They can look at the status quo under the pandemic, and say "this would be better if people were in the office". Doesn't matter if things are going well, or things are going poorly; the pre-existing bias determines the conclusion. Monthly reports aren't helpful there. Really, the only meaningful data point is "what is going to make the company the most successful". And, there, the better execs are looking to enable hybrid workplaces, where people can work remotely or onsite, whichever enables them best, and the technology and practices support that, since they recognize remote is an opportunity, and that it also prevents talent bleed due to poor morale. The worse execs are trying to mandate returning to the office, thinking that that's the only way to be successful, and are completely discounting the effect on morale.

pindab0ter 5y ago

I’m genuinely curious what reason there is for women and people of colour to not want to return to office. Parents I get. (Also; why make the ‘working parents’ distinction? Isn’t that implied?) I have multiple colleagues working mostly from home right note because the family situation demands it. I just wonder why the employee satisfaction and retention would be threatened more for women and people of colour than for people not in those groups.

lostcolony 5y ago
One of the things I've adopted in the pandemic, and which has shed some light on this, is moving more things that would have been discussions, into collaborative documents. I.e., rather than "let me get the team together and discuss this" I instead write a doc, and then ask people to comment on it, and I seek to resolve the comments. What I've seen is that people who frequently would speak little in person, will sometimes have a LOT to say on the doc. They're more direct and less self-deprecating too. The changes that remote has forced in many ways have changed, and potentially removed some of the cultural barriers that were in place before; much like an internet forum allows a level of confidence and directness that a person may not feel in person, so too has that particular change seemed to enable some people to find their voice. I'd imagine that even for things that are still zoom meetings, it has changed things too; more agenda driven, more need to raise your hand or be polite when you realize multiple people have started to respond and still carve out time for the people who spoke up but aren't going next, rather than just interrupt and now soandso has the floor, etc. I don't know any of these things to be the reason, but I could easily see it leading to a different and more egalitarian experience for women and people of color.
- pindab0ter 5y ago
  I’d never have thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I might even give that method a go.

dredmorbius 5y ago

What Do Bosses Do?: The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production Stephen A. Marglin First Published July 1, 1974 https://doi.org/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://doi.org/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/048661347400600206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/048661347400600... Part 1. http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347400600206 http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347400600206 Part 2. http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347500700102 http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.1177%2F048661347500700102

rodrigosetti 5y ago

Executives are more politically savvy and know that in-person connections are more effective to build alliances, coalitions, trust, etc. Additionally, they have the resources to pay people to take care of their kids and do their home chores, so that they don’t need the flexibility much