8 ms·

Why Executives Like the Office (2021)

44 points by sherilm 4y ago

fnordpiglet 4y ago
TLDR; narcissists need an audience
LightG 4y ago
In my experience, it's less about surveillance and more about Executives having absolutely no technical skills. The only way to cover this deficit is to have bums on seats who will come and help at a moments notice. Your experience may differ.
aargh_aargh 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220412074929/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/11/06/why-executives-like-the-office https://web.archive.org/web/20220412074929/https://www.econo...
glanzwulf 4y ago
From my experience it's all about control. If you're at home they're not sure if you're working even if the results are there, but if they see you on your desk they think you're working. Jokes on them I used to procrastinate a lot more in the office
palla89 4y ago
Reading the title, I thought it was meant "The Office" as TV Series :(
- rendall 4y ago
  Gah, me too. I want to live in a world where executives like The Office so much that Economist is compelled to write about it.
Loughla 4y ago
The assessment that it is more difficult to "have the managerial experiences and interpersonal experiences that you need to have to take your career forward in a work-remotely environment" is fair. Because that's office politics. Also, it's fair that it makes the company culture fragmented and nearly impossible to move together as a team for folks without that experience. Silos are real. But, in my experience, the main reason is that senior leaders cannot let go of the 'it's work time you should be working' mindset, and understand that some people work best in the morning, some at night, and some in small bursts with breaks between. I have learned that a VAST majority of companies simply suck at setting goals and measuring employee productivity.
- sherilm 4y ago
  Many of the prevailing HR assumptions, including those of some if not all execs, are rooted in early 20th century industrial understanding of human beings. It's deeply rooted in prevailing culture and systems.
lordnacho 4y ago
Though I do think there's a lot of bad managers around, one thing to consider is that executive type roles tend to be people jobs, and people jobs are hard to do without face to face conversations. Office politics requires you to weigh what people want to do, and that's often hard without seeing exactly what expression someone is making. It also thrives on knowing who is talking to who, and that's also a lot easier to figure out in real life than via slack.
alliao 4y ago
all cynicisms aside, if my presence makes an impact then you bet I'd like to be there too and it just so happens execs make calls that matter at the end of the day so they're more likely to want to be present. salaried workers are labourers, having no say in company affairs, and it's little wonder that they feel like they're needed there. to do the work sure, but actual engagement? hard ask as they are decoupled (rightly or wrongly) from decision making therefore cut from the profit. ps. having stock/options doesn't help either, it's about control and agency and less so about ownership and profit
- Spivak 4y ago
  And to me there's absolutely zero shame in this working arrangement. I'm a laborer, I work cards, fix bugs, add features. I don't live to work, I work for a salary and benefits and want no emotional investment in what I do. My actual life is what I do outside of work.
  - alliao 4y ago
    You might like Severance the tv show, and The Stanley Parable game hahahaha zero shame here too, I'm exchanging my time and skill for salary nothing wrong with a hustle!
734129837261 4y ago
It's about a whole list of things and many shades of gray between them: control, social needs, the need to be seen, crappy home life, unprepared for a home office, etc. My managers at work (I'm a software engineer) tend to not have a dedicated office. They have kids running around being noisy and nosy. They STILL dress up wearing nice clothes. And I swear some of them talk about their gorgeous cars for the sake of talking about their cars, especially now nobody sees them drive or park those cars anymore. They are also very verbose in any sort of meeting and dislike it when people turn off their cameras. I blame their extroverted social needs for this. They got to become a manager because of that social skill and need, and they are working with software engineers who are more toward the introverted side of the spectrum. I don't want to wake up early, drive my car in traffic jams, find a parking spot, see that someone stole my favourite (but still bad) office chair, sit in an open office full of noisy people, working on shared & dirty keyboards, looking at small budget screens, on desks that can't be adjusted. At home I have a dedicated office with a sofa. Height-adjustable desk. Herman Miller Aeron chair all to myself. Mechanical keyboard (that doesn't drive other people nuts with its sound) and expensive mouse. Two 27" 1440p 144Hz screens on desk mounted arms. Both of my cats to keep me company. My own toilet all to myself. A fully stocked kitchen. A place to work out. A very nice 55" OLED screen. My coffee machine is all mine (Gaggia Babila) with freshly roasted beans delivered every week. And my office has a view over a park and a large body of water. Best of all: no office small talk. No interruptions at my desk. And if I realise, during a meeting, that I could just be a fly on the wall and continue working instead? Then I do exactly that, whereas in an office situation I couldn't do that.
- UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  You had me at "My own toilet all to myself". I understand not everyone in the world is loathe to use a public restroom, but Jesus H. Christ, people use public restrooms like apes in a zoo. Not to mention, My loud, clickity-clackity mechanical keyboard (which isn't allowed to leave my office on punishment of death from my wife - I have the silent one for the living room gaming rig). I can run a couple of rigs at the same time, and work when the meeting I'm in doesn't particularly pertain to me, even though I lead a small team - which means I'm invited to meetings, but only have to listen to a quarter of what gets said and still have to get work done. My team generally had their heads in the screen all day, anyway. We're fairly socially awkward and loud talkers/laughers, which means we annoy everyone when we don't communicate via Slack... which is almost every team I've worked on (I'm the worst offender, yes). I understand remote doesn't work great for every team, but for A LOT of software teams... and we work with an accounting and ops team, it works great for all of us =/
fumblebee 4y ago
As someone fortunate enough to have worked remotely over the past two years, I've found the change enormously refreshing. But, as with most things, there's tradeoffs, and the author correctly points out a few of them: > These concerns have substance. Virtual work risks entrenching silos: people are more likely to spend time with colleagues they already know. Corporate culture can be easier to absorb in three dimensions. Deep relationships are harder to form with a laggy internet connection. Another issue I'd add to this list is that promotions partially hinge on "chummyness" with decision makers. Remote work makes this challenging, and consequently, it might explain why folks are eager to get lucrative pay-rises and promotions by jumping ship to different companies. (Maybe this has always been the case, but it seems to have been exacerbated).
- ramesh31 4y ago
  Absolutely nothing can overcome the fact that being fully remote allows me to decouple my physical existence from earning a living. Nothing. I would literally take a 50% pay cut if it were my only option to remain remote. It has completely transformed my entire life and I can't possibly imagine ever going back for any reason. Yes I miss my coworkers. Yes I miss lunches and happy hours. But none of that even comes close to how much I would miss not being chained to a physical location and daily work schedule.
- LiquidSky 4y ago
  Isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't promotions not hinge on being friends with the decision-makers or being best able to kiss ass?
  - fumblebee 4y ago
    I agree. But in a hypothetical where, all things held equal, it's you verses someone else up for promotion, and they're friendlier with the decision-maker, they'll be the one receiving it.
- greedo 4y ago
  Corporate culture is BS. Do McDonalds employees wake up feeling that their customers "Deserve a Break today!"? Most of us on this site are professionals, who don't need mission statements, corporate culture etc. to do our jobs. We need effective guidance and management, we don't need a kumbaya culture to make us spend all our waking moments following Keir's precepts.
karaterobot 4y ago
I think it's reasonable to believe that the kind of work executives do is done better in person. I've never been an executive, but I'd believe it. I do know that, for many individual contributors, the kind of work they do is better done remotely. Certainly their lives are better. That's the real tension, in my opinion: whose experience is more important, and if it comes down a zero sum contest, who can make the other side blink first? Ideally it should not come down to a zero sum contest, but that's often how these things happen.
roflyear 4y ago
You really don't need an entire article to understand this - just ask your boss or your boss's boss why they like being in the office. It is because it is harder to manage people (or they think it is harder to) remotely.
- cwalv 4y ago
  I don't think it is actually harder to manage people well when they're remote. But if you're not doing it well, it's more obvious to everyone, including yourself.
LiquidSky 4y ago
It all boils down to them being worried WFH exposes how useless most management actually is.
Traster 4y ago
There seems to be a disconnect here: > 75% wanted to be in the office three days a week or more; only 34% of non-executives felt the same way. They go on then to talk generally about people might need to be in the office. This is missing something really obvious though - Executives think executives need to be in the office. Not everyone. It makes sense that Executives - people whose role is primarily about co-ordinating the organisation obviously are better off being in the office because the office is good for all the things you need to do as an executive. It is great for high bandwidth communication. Meanwhile, individual contributors work is primarily solitary and so enjoy far more benefits from working at home in a more controlled, isolated environment. Executives think they themselves should be in the office 3 days a week. That doesn't necessarily mean that executives think everyone else should be in the office 3 days a week.
akhilpotla 4y ago
This is also about job security. Technical people often have a record of what they have done. Think commits and PRs. Managers don't have this. Their job doesn't produce anything tangible, this is not to say that it is useless. There are good managers and bad managers, with the majority falling in the latter category. Being seen in meeting rooms filled with people, talking to them, and pointing to things on a powerpoint presentation can give other more senior managers (who determine their position and compensation) the aura that they are hard at work and making things happen. This of course is not very strong reasoning.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  > the aura that they are hard at work and making things happen. Yes, and looping it back into a point in the article: the status that these demonstrations are meant to confer (consciously or not).
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  And this feeds right into the mentality of: "If you ass isn't in a seat, you aren't working"
- thefz 4y ago
  My previous manager arranged the furniture in his office to be sitting facing the door, computer at his side, to be able to look at us, and call us, more easily. Guess who was strongly for the return to office.
trhoad 4y ago
I don't think I'd be where I am today if it wasn't for sitting physically next to people and watching what they do, picking up on non-verbal cues etc. I love working from home, but I also have the mentality that we all need to "pay it forward" sometimes, so I tend to spend a couple of days a week in an office with (typically) more junior engineers who may not even have space for a desk in their flat share. The "I'm alright, Jack" WFH crew really get on my nerves - it's a disappointingly selfish mentality.
- nh23423fefe 4y ago
  Precisely. People are mimics. Without offices no one knows what to do and how to be successful. I don't believe all the people who say they are super productive at home because being productive is being a good team member. And remote people aren't good team members. They are absent and aloof and the barrier to interacting with them is higher. People hate the commute. That's fine. I wish everyone would stop lying that WFH is a pareto improvement. It's not.
  - greedo 4y ago
    Since you're post is light on facts, here's some from my company: In 2020, we had a record year in both revenue and earnings. That's the bottom line. I won't mention all the KPIs that our IT staff hit since KPIs are all bullshit, but we exceed the previous year by a significant margin. During this year, my team grew by 20%, and hasn't had any turnover. In 2021, we had yet another record year in both revenue and earnings. Specifically, earnings were up almost 15%, and we're a financial services business, so we didn't get a boom from commodities etc. As with the previous year, we exceed the goals for our KPIs by a substantial margin. So now in 2022, we're hybrid, though most of my team prefers to work from home. And we're still doing exceedingly well as far as we can be measured, both as a team and a company. So that's hard data. The company, despite being 100% remote in 2020/2021, has never been more profitable. Ever. Maybe your team is full of losers who are absent, aloof, and difficult to interact with. Or perhaps it's something else...
    - nh23423fefe 4y ago
_wldu 4y ago
I work on-site and from home. There are pros and cons to each. Some people prefer one or the other. A hybrid solution is probably best, but I can do either or both. Each side has valid arguments (empty office space, office rent cost, lack of in-person chemistry) versus (no commute, more time to focus, just as productive). Some people do take advantage of WFH and work less. Some people who cannot WFH feel it is unfair. It's a complex issue and both sides should work together to come to a fair solution for everyone. Bickering about it and not compromising is unproductive.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Two random notes: > A hybrid solution is probably best IMVHO definitively not because of some practical aspects: a company needs offices to host workers, and using them less they are paid and less used, also people need gears, witch means or moving stuff around or have two set of anything. Surely, offices can be rent, can be smaller etc but I see exactly no reason to even try hybrid setup. It's like at war having two generals with opposite ideas and decide to put themselves in the middle, witch means something that does not work in BOTH cases... Not counting the fact that for hybrid setups remote workers still need to be at a reasonable distance to reach the office as needed cutting some economic and life options for many... > Some people do take advantage of WFH and work less. Some people who cannot WFH feel it is unfair. Normally we should be paid for the value we gives to the company, not for how hard we work... If with much less effort I do more there is nothing wrong from the company POV, at maximum I might feel overqualified or being happy with the load. The complexity lay IMVHO in the fact that there is very little experience in WFH on scale, witch scare many, there is incertitude for the future so many do not want to invest in something new until the society stabilize etc unfortunately like for ANY "new" thing we can't have "young and experienced workers". We can progress taking risks and eventually profiting from results or remain as we are giving up progress, research, development. Both can work a bit, until something break things again. Since we have only one life and no undo for it I prefer exploring instead of remaining locked. With care, surely, taking time to live and breath but still evolving.
- pc86 4y ago
  I do think there are valid arguments in favor of in-office work, but "empty office space" and "office rent cost" are not valid. An old employer of mine had a company car that got shared when people had to go to remote sites for same-day work. That wasn't getting passed around during COVID just because they were paying for it, it just sat there unused. The cost in particular is just a sunk cost fallacy. You're paying for the office regardless, so because of that you're going to force people to pay out of pocket for gas and other incidentals just so they can sit there and (at least for most software engineers) be less productive? And you've also just increased your own costs because you probably could have left the lights and HVAC off? Nonsense.
Jaruzel 4y ago
https://archive.ph/b18QW https://archive.ph/b18QW
notorandit 4y ago
They love it because most of them are execu-morons. Especially when talking about data and Excel.
nickstinemates 4y ago
Am executive. Hate office. Other execs I work with do too. Can only think of 2 in the past 10 years I've worked with that had all of the tropes that these articles tend to parade.
throwaway22032 4y ago
Life happens outside. Most of us only work for the sole purpose of actually doing things in that outside world. You sit at home and work at Uber for X but everyone's at home all day so there's no need for Uber because no-one moves. It's like people here have fully internalized "there must be work" but not really thought about what the point of even doing it is. Post-2020 life has been a neverending comedy show of these sort of quotes from people who "like" sitting in front of a screen so that tomorrow they can continue sitting in front of a screen.
- cwalv 4y ago
  > Most of us only work for the sole purpose of actually doing things in that outside world. If the main point was to do things outside, I'd spend most days doing what I do (outside) on the weekend. I suspect for most people it has more to do with getting a paycheck.
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    And the money is for....
salt-thrower 4y ago
Am I the only engineer who does miss a hybrid office schedule? My productivity has cratered over the pandemic with WFH becoming constant. My motivation is nonexistent. In the past, having one or two WFH days per week allowed me to get solid focus time to crush tasks that required deep thinking. But that effect only lasts a few days tops. Going on three years of this, even the simplest tasks feel like pulling teeth. I’m burnt out and I really feel like being in a room with other engineers is the only solution. It’s to the point that I’m thinking of leaving my fully remote company to find an in person office. Something I never thought I’d say.
- boojums 4y ago
  My group got moved 100% work from home, but people remained in the geographic area. We get lunch together on a biweekly schedule which helps keep the social aspect of working in the office alive. Depending on your situation, you could try something similar.
toss1 4y ago
Time for another reminder of a study I saw long before the COVID-19 days - study done referring to software enabling distributed knowledge work. Remote work improves the results of good managers, and makes bad managers' results worse. Apparently because good managers manage for results, and bad managers manage only for indicia of sork, such as butts in seats, screen time, ability to walk around and interrupt to micromanage... If a company at this point, with solid results for as-good-as or better results far lower costs (e.g., reduced office costs), and becoming more competitive (e.g., ability to hire workforce from entire continents and not just 50km from your offices), fails to be moving to substantial if not complete remote work, this is a negative sign, and you can safely avoid them if at all possible. This goes for applying for jobs as well as investment.
jleyank 4y ago
Note that the people wanting to go back to the office have one. Often a very nice one, with a gatekeeper. The horde, on the other hand, doesn’t always have a desk to call their own let alone an office, gatekeeper, … Power trips and lack of empathy sum up (senior) management far too often. The head shed exists to run the company. Other managers exist as conduits or team facilitators. If the grunts don’t grunt contentedly, there’s no company.
game_the0ry 4y ago
Fundamentally, the question of why executives prefer in-person office over remote is -- extroverted people vs introverted people. Extroverts tend to get promoted to management. They feed off the presence and interaction of others. But, more importantly, they want to show up and show off. They want to wear nice clothes in the office, not pajamas at home. They want their accomplishments broadcasted around the office, and that's how they get noticed / promoted. There is a lot of research that shows people who are extroverted get paid more. So of course, extroverted managers are going to push for return-to-office, while their introverted subordinates prefer to work from home and at peace, especially when social interaction can induce anxiety (it does for me). If you're a manager, figure out how to make both personality types happy, not what makes you happy.
MengerSponge 4y ago
Interesting that nobody talks about creativity in this thread or in the article. I imagine a lot of jobs just rely on execution, so those "water cooler" interactions that yield innovations down the line aren't valued as highly. Of course, as a scientist my social landscape and work environment are really different from most Economist readers.
thefz 4y ago
> Virtual work risks entrenching silos: people are more likely to spend time with colleagues they already know. This is incredibly true for in-person work too.
Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
I think managers being extroverted (or, if you read this thread, useless narcissistic status-seekers with bad home lives!) is part of the answer, but not all. Another simple explanation: For an individual dev, your job might be to, say, take a new feature and then work for hours or days on coding, debugging, documenting, etc. that feature. How that maps to WFH is pretty obvious (just code at home instead of work!) Getting up to talk to another employee is maybe a few times a day thing that just becomes a quick ping on Slack. Likewise, if you have a meeting that day, do it on Zoom. Because you see how you can do your job, you are comfortable with WFH. For a manager, your job is to get the people and teams you manage to work together to accomplish something, and perhaps make a few key decisions now and then. My contention is that, while I have no doubt that there are methods of succeeding at as a manager in a WFH system, it's simply a much bigger change from how managers are used to working. For example, walking around the office to see if anyone catches your eye and 'grabs you for a quick question' is not straight forward (pinging dozens of people to say 'hey, anything up' throughout the day is just bothersome.) Likewise, the simple act of observing team dynamics becomes hard because lots of communication is happening in un-observable private communication channels. It maybe that the WFH model really is better for everyone, but I think managers are simply in for a bigger change to how they work and it's therefore simple to understand why they are more hesitant.

44 points by sherilm 4y ago

TLDR; narcissists need an audience

In my experience, it's less about surveillance and more about Executives having absolutely no technical skills. The only way to cover this deficit is to have bums on seats who will come and help at a moments notice. Your experience may differ.

aargh_aargh 4y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220412074929/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/11/06/why-executives-like-the-office https://web.archive.org/web/20220412074929/https://www.econo...

glanzwulf 4y ago

From my experience it's all about control. If you're at home they're not sure if you're working even if the results are there, but if they see you on your desk they think you're working. Jokes on them I used to procrastinate a lot more in the office

palla89 4y ago

Reading the title, I thought it was meant "The Office" as TV Series :(

rendall 4y ago
Gah, me too. I want to live in a world where executives like The Office so much that Economist is compelled to write about it.

Loughla 4y ago

The assessment that it is more difficult to "have the managerial experiences and interpersonal experiences that you need to have to take your career forward in a work-remotely environment" is fair. Because that's office politics. Also, it's fair that it makes the company culture fragmented and nearly impossible to move together as a team for folks without that experience. Silos are real. But, in my experience, the main reason is that senior leaders cannot let go of the 'it's work time you should be working' mindset, and understand that some people work best in the morning, some at night, and some in small bursts with breaks between. I have learned that a VAST majority of companies simply suck at setting goals and measuring employee productivity.

sherilm 4y ago
Many of the prevailing HR assumptions, including those of some if not all execs, are rooted in early 20th century industrial understanding of human beings. It's deeply rooted in prevailing culture and systems.

lordnacho 4y ago

Though I do think there's a lot of bad managers around, one thing to consider is that executive type roles tend to be people jobs, and people jobs are hard to do without face to face conversations. Office politics requires you to weigh what people want to do, and that's often hard without seeing exactly what expression someone is making. It also thrives on knowing who is talking to who, and that's also a lot easier to figure out in real life than via slack.

alliao 4y ago

all cynicisms aside, if my presence makes an impact then you bet I'd like to be there too and it just so happens execs make calls that matter at the end of the day so they're more likely to want to be present. salaried workers are labourers, having no say in company affairs, and it's little wonder that they feel like they're needed there. to do the work sure, but actual engagement? hard ask as they are decoupled (rightly or wrongly) from decision making therefore cut from the profit. ps. having stock/options doesn't help either, it's about control and agency and less so about ownership and profit

Spivak 4y ago
And to me there's absolutely zero shame in this working arrangement. I'm a laborer, I work cards, fix bugs, add features. I don't live to work, I work for a salary and benefits and want no emotional investment in what I do. My actual life is what I do outside of work.
- alliao 4y ago
  You might like Severance the tv show, and The Stanley Parable game hahahaha zero shame here too, I'm exchanging my time and skill for salary nothing wrong with a hustle!

734129837261 4y ago

It's about a whole list of things and many shades of gray between them: control, social needs, the need to be seen, crappy home life, unprepared for a home office, etc. My managers at work (I'm a software engineer) tend to not have a dedicated office. They have kids running around being noisy and nosy. They STILL dress up wearing nice clothes. And I swear some of them talk about their gorgeous cars for the sake of talking about their cars, especially now nobody sees them drive or park those cars anymore. They are also very verbose in any sort of meeting and dislike it when people turn off their cameras. I blame their extroverted social needs for this. They got to become a manager because of that social skill and need, and they are working with software engineers who are more toward the introverted side of the spectrum. I don't want to wake up early, drive my car in traffic jams, find a parking spot, see that someone stole my favourite (but still bad) office chair, sit in an open office full of noisy people, working on shared & dirty keyboards, looking at small budget screens, on desks that can't be adjusted. At home I have a dedicated office with a sofa. Height-adjustable desk. Herman Miller Aeron chair all to myself. Mechanical keyboard (that doesn't drive other people nuts with its sound) and expensive mouse. Two 27" 1440p 144Hz screens on desk mounted arms. Both of my cats to keep me company. My own toilet all to myself. A fully stocked kitchen. A place to work out. A very nice 55" OLED screen. My coffee machine is all mine (Gaggia Babila) with freshly roasted beans delivered every week. And my office has a view over a park and a large body of water. Best of all: no office small talk. No interruptions at my desk. And if I realise, during a meeting, that I could just be a fly on the wall and continue working instead? Then I do exactly that, whereas in an office situation I couldn't do that.

UnpossibleJim 4y ago
You had me at "My own toilet all to myself". I understand not everyone in the world is loathe to use a public restroom, but Jesus H. Christ, people use public restrooms like apes in a zoo. Not to mention, My loud, clickity-clackity mechanical keyboard (which isn't allowed to leave my office on punishment of death from my wife - I have the silent one for the living room gaming rig). I can run a couple of rigs at the same time, and work when the meeting I'm in doesn't particularly pertain to me, even though I lead a small team - which means I'm invited to meetings, but only have to listen to a quarter of what gets said and still have to get work done. My team generally had their heads in the screen all day, anyway. We're fairly socially awkward and loud talkers/laughers, which means we annoy everyone when we don't communicate via Slack... which is almost every team I've worked on (I'm the worst offender, yes). I understand remote doesn't work great for every team, but for A LOT of software teams... and we work with an accounting and ops team, it works great for all of us =/

fumblebee 4y ago

As someone fortunate enough to have worked remotely over the past two years, I've found the change enormously refreshing. But, as with most things, there's tradeoffs, and the author correctly points out a few of them: > These concerns have substance. Virtual work risks entrenching silos: people are more likely to spend time with colleagues they already know. Corporate culture can be easier to absorb in three dimensions. Deep relationships are harder to form with a laggy internet connection. Another issue I'd add to this list is that promotions partially hinge on "chummyness" with decision makers. Remote work makes this challenging, and consequently, it might explain why folks are eager to get lucrative pay-rises and promotions by jumping ship to different companies. (Maybe this has always been the case, but it seems to have been exacerbated).

ramesh31 4y ago
Absolutely nothing can overcome the fact that being fully remote allows me to decouple my physical existence from earning a living. Nothing. I would literally take a 50% pay cut if it were my only option to remain remote. It has completely transformed my entire life and I can't possibly imagine ever going back for any reason. Yes I miss my coworkers. Yes I miss lunches and happy hours. But none of that even comes close to how much I would miss not being chained to a physical location and daily work schedule.
LiquidSky 4y ago
Isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't promotions not hinge on being friends with the decision-makers or being best able to kiss ass?
- fumblebee 4y ago
  I agree. But in a hypothetical where, all things held equal, it's you verses someone else up for promotion, and they're friendlier with the decision-maker, they'll be the one receiving it.
greedo 4y ago
Corporate culture is BS. Do McDonalds employees wake up feeling that their customers "Deserve a Break today!"? Most of us on this site are professionals, who don't need mission statements, corporate culture etc. to do our jobs. We need effective guidance and management, we don't need a kumbaya culture to make us spend all our waking moments following Keir's precepts.

karaterobot 4y ago

I think it's reasonable to believe that the kind of work executives do is done better in person. I've never been an executive, but I'd believe it. I do know that, for many individual contributors, the kind of work they do is better done remotely. Certainly their lives are better. That's the real tension, in my opinion: whose experience is more important, and if it comes down a zero sum contest, who can make the other side blink first? Ideally it should not come down to a zero sum contest, but that's often how these things happen.

roflyear 4y ago

You really don't need an entire article to understand this - just ask your boss or your boss's boss why they like being in the office. It is because it is harder to manage people (or they think it is harder to) remotely.

cwalv 4y ago
I don't think it is actually harder to manage people well when they're remote. But if you're not doing it well, it's more obvious to everyone, including yourself.

LiquidSky 4y ago

It all boils down to them being worried WFH exposes how useless most management actually is.

Traster 4y ago

There seems to be a disconnect here: > 75% wanted to be in the office three days a week or more; only 34% of non-executives felt the same way. They go on then to talk generally about people might need to be in the office. This is missing something really obvious though - Executives think executives need to be in the office. Not everyone. It makes sense that Executives - people whose role is primarily about co-ordinating the organisation obviously are better off being in the office because the office is good for all the things you need to do as an executive. It is great for high bandwidth communication. Meanwhile, individual contributors work is primarily solitary and so enjoy far more benefits from working at home in a more controlled, isolated environment. Executives think they themselves should be in the office 3 days a week. That doesn't necessarily mean that executives think everyone else should be in the office 3 days a week.

akhilpotla 4y ago

This is also about job security. Technical people often have a record of what they have done. Think commits and PRs. Managers don't have this. Their job doesn't produce anything tangible, this is not to say that it is useless. There are good managers and bad managers, with the majority falling in the latter category. Being seen in meeting rooms filled with people, talking to them, and pointing to things on a powerpoint presentation can give other more senior managers (who determine their position and compensation) the aura that they are hard at work and making things happen. This of course is not very strong reasoning.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
> the aura that they are hard at work and making things happen. Yes, and looping it back into a point in the article: the status that these demonstrations are meant to confer (consciously or not).
_fat_santa 4y ago
And this feeds right into the mentality of: "If you ass isn't in a seat, you aren't working"
thefz 4y ago
My previous manager arranged the furniture in his office to be sitting facing the door, computer at his side, to be able to look at us, and call us, more easily. Guess who was strongly for the return to office.

trhoad 4y ago

I don't think I'd be where I am today if it wasn't for sitting physically next to people and watching what they do, picking up on non-verbal cues etc. I love working from home, but I also have the mentality that we all need to "pay it forward" sometimes, so I tend to spend a couple of days a week in an office with (typically) more junior engineers who may not even have space for a desk in their flat share. The "I'm alright, Jack" WFH crew really get on my nerves - it's a disappointingly selfish mentality.

nh23423fefe 4y ago
Precisely. People are mimics. Without offices no one knows what to do and how to be successful. I don't believe all the people who say they are super productive at home because being productive is being a good team member. And remote people aren't good team members. They are absent and aloof and the barrier to interacting with them is higher. People hate the commute. That's fine. I wish everyone would stop lying that WFH is a pareto improvement. It's not.
- greedo 4y ago
  Since you're post is light on facts, here's some from my company: In 2020, we had a record year in both revenue and earnings. That's the bottom line. I won't mention all the KPIs that our IT staff hit since KPIs are all bullshit, but we exceed the previous year by a significant margin. During this year, my team grew by 20%, and hasn't had any turnover. In 2021, we had yet another record year in both revenue and earnings. Specifically, earnings were up almost 15%, and we're a financial services business, so we didn't get a boom from commodities etc. As with the previous year, we exceed the goals for our KPIs by a substantial margin. So now in 2022, we're hybrid, though most of my team prefers to work from home. And we're still doing exceedingly well as far as we can be measured, both as a team and a company. So that's hard data. The company, despite being 100% remote in 2020/2021, has never been more profitable. Ever. Maybe your team is full of losers who are absent, aloof, and difficult to interact with. Or perhaps it's something else...
  - nh23423fefe 4y ago

_wldu 4y ago

I work on-site and from home. There are pros and cons to each. Some people prefer one or the other. A hybrid solution is probably best, but I can do either or both. Each side has valid arguments (empty office space, office rent cost, lack of in-person chemistry) versus (no commute, more time to focus, just as productive). Some people do take advantage of WFH and work less. Some people who cannot WFH feel it is unfair. It's a complex issue and both sides should work together to come to a fair solution for everyone. Bickering about it and not compromising is unproductive.

kkfx 4y ago
Two random notes: > A hybrid solution is probably best IMVHO definitively not because of some practical aspects: a company needs offices to host workers, and using them less they are paid and less used, also people need gears, witch means or moving stuff around or have two set of anything. Surely, offices can be rent, can be smaller etc but I see exactly no reason to even try hybrid setup. It's like at war having two generals with opposite ideas and decide to put themselves in the middle, witch means something that does not work in BOTH cases... Not counting the fact that for hybrid setups remote workers still need to be at a reasonable distance to reach the office as needed cutting some economic and life options for many... > Some people do take advantage of WFH and work less. Some people who cannot WFH feel it is unfair. Normally we should be paid for the value we gives to the company, not for how hard we work... If with much less effort I do more there is nothing wrong from the company POV, at maximum I might feel overqualified or being happy with the load. The complexity lay IMVHO in the fact that there is very little experience in WFH on scale, witch scare many, there is incertitude for the future so many do not want to invest in something new until the society stabilize etc unfortunately like for ANY "new" thing we can't have "young and experienced workers". We can progress taking risks and eventually profiting from results or remain as we are giving up progress, research, development. Both can work a bit, until something break things again. Since we have only one life and no undo for it I prefer exploring instead of remaining locked. With care, surely, taking time to live and breath but still evolving.
pc86 4y ago
I do think there are valid arguments in favor of in-office work, but "empty office space" and "office rent cost" are not valid. An old employer of mine had a company car that got shared when people had to go to remote sites for same-day work. That wasn't getting passed around during COVID just because they were paying for it, it just sat there unused. The cost in particular is just a sunk cost fallacy. You're paying for the office regardless, so because of that you're going to force people to pay out of pocket for gas and other incidentals just so they can sit there and (at least for most software engineers) be less productive? And you've also just increased your own costs because you probably could have left the lights and HVAC off? Nonsense.

Jaruzel 4y ago

https://archive.ph/b18QW https://archive.ph/b18QW

notorandit 4y ago

They love it because most of them are execu-morons. Especially when talking about data and Excel.

nickstinemates 4y ago

Am executive. Hate office. Other execs I work with do too. Can only think of 2 in the past 10 years I've worked with that had all of the tropes that these articles tend to parade.

throwaway22032 4y ago

Life happens outside. Most of us only work for the sole purpose of actually doing things in that outside world. You sit at home and work at Uber for X but everyone's at home all day so there's no need for Uber because no-one moves. It's like people here have fully internalized "there must be work" but not really thought about what the point of even doing it is. Post-2020 life has been a neverending comedy show of these sort of quotes from people who "like" sitting in front of a screen so that tomorrow they can continue sitting in front of a screen.

cwalv 4y ago
> Most of us only work for the sole purpose of actually doing things in that outside world. If the main point was to do things outside, I'd spend most days doing what I do (outside) on the weekend. I suspect for most people it has more to do with getting a paycheck.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  And the money is for....

salt-thrower 4y ago

Am I the only engineer who does miss a hybrid office schedule? My productivity has cratered over the pandemic with WFH becoming constant. My motivation is nonexistent. In the past, having one or two WFH days per week allowed me to get solid focus time to crush tasks that required deep thinking. But that effect only lasts a few days tops. Going on three years of this, even the simplest tasks feel like pulling teeth. I’m burnt out and I really feel like being in a room with other engineers is the only solution. It’s to the point that I’m thinking of leaving my fully remote company to find an in person office. Something I never thought I’d say.

boojums 4y ago
My group got moved 100% work from home, but people remained in the geographic area. We get lunch together on a biweekly schedule which helps keep the social aspect of working in the office alive. Depending on your situation, you could try something similar.

toss1 4y ago

Time for another reminder of a study I saw long before the COVID-19 days - study done referring to software enabling distributed knowledge work. Remote work improves the results of good managers, and makes bad managers' results worse. Apparently because good managers manage for results, and bad managers manage only for indicia of sork, such as butts in seats, screen time, ability to walk around and interrupt to micromanage... If a company at this point, with solid results for as-good-as or better results far lower costs (e.g., reduced office costs), and becoming more competitive (e.g., ability to hire workforce from entire continents and not just 50km from your offices), fails to be moving to substantial if not complete remote work, this is a negative sign, and you can safely avoid them if at all possible. This goes for applying for jobs as well as investment.

jleyank 4y ago

Note that the people wanting to go back to the office have one. Often a very nice one, with a gatekeeper. The horde, on the other hand, doesn’t always have a desk to call their own let alone an office, gatekeeper, … Power trips and lack of empathy sum up (senior) management far too often. The head shed exists to run the company. Other managers exist as conduits or team facilitators. If the grunts don’t grunt contentedly, there’s no company.

game_the0ry 4y ago

Fundamentally, the question of why executives prefer in-person office over remote is -- extroverted people vs introverted people. Extroverts tend to get promoted to management. They feed off the presence and interaction of others. But, more importantly, they want to show up and show off. They want to wear nice clothes in the office, not pajamas at home. They want their accomplishments broadcasted around the office, and that's how they get noticed / promoted. There is a lot of research that shows people who are extroverted get paid more. So of course, extroverted managers are going to push for return-to-office, while their introverted subordinates prefer to work from home and at peace, especially when social interaction can induce anxiety (it does for me). If you're a manager, figure out how to make both personality types happy, not what makes you happy.

MengerSponge 4y ago

Interesting that nobody talks about creativity in this thread or in the article. I imagine a lot of jobs just rely on execution, so those "water cooler" interactions that yield innovations down the line aren't valued as highly. Of course, as a scientist my social landscape and work environment are really different from most Economist readers.

thefz 4y ago

> Virtual work risks entrenching silos: people are more likely to spend time with colleagues they already know. This is incredibly true for in-person work too.

Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago

I think managers being extroverted (or, if you read this thread, useless narcissistic status-seekers with bad home lives!) is part of the answer, but not all. Another simple explanation: For an individual dev, your job might be to, say, take a new feature and then work for hours or days on coding, debugging, documenting, etc. that feature. How that maps to WFH is pretty obvious (just code at home instead of work!) Getting up to talk to another employee is maybe a few times a day thing that just becomes a quick ping on Slack. Likewise, if you have a meeting that day, do it on Zoom. Because you see how you can do your job, you are comfortable with WFH. For a manager, your job is to get the people and teams you manage to work together to accomplish something, and perhaps make a few key decisions now and then. My contention is that, while I have no doubt that there are methods of succeeding at as a manager in a WFH system, it's simply a much bigger change from how managers are used to working. For example, walking around the office to see if anyone catches your eye and 'grabs you for a quick question' is not straight forward (pinging dozens of people to say 'hey, anything up' throughout the day is just bothersome.) Likewise, the simple act of observing team dynamics becomes hard because lots of communication is happening in un-observable private communication channels. It maybe that the WFH model really is better for everyone, but I think managers are simply in for a bigger change to how they work and it's therefore simple to understand why they are more hesitant.