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A new CEO says employees can’t work remotely after all, and they revolt

• bacchusracine 3y ago
  https://archive.is/yiH3N https://archive.is/yiH3N
  • wedn3sday 3y ago
    Thank you kind internet denizen.
• lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I assume these moves are intended to reduce employee headcount without calling it layoffs.
  • anonporridge 3y ago
    "managed out"
  • RankingMember 3y ago
    Cynical but I wouldn't put it past them to have done calculations estimating the labor shrinkage that would result from such a move and the savings in voluntary (if coerced) separations vs actual layoffs (unemployment).
    • nitwit005 3y ago
      It's more realistic than cynical at this point. There has been a pattern of announcing return to office after mass layoffs.
      • RankingMember 3y ago
        I've also seen what seems like a lot of companies retroactively calling the remote work setup a "pilot program" as they cancel it, as if to say "it's not our fault you thought this was permanent!".
  • Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago
    100% - they've cynically calculated that this will mostly impact their more senior employees (on higher salaries) and just use it as a cudgel to drive them out, without having to do layoffs.
  • MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    Yuuuuuuuuuuuuup. I haven't run the numbers, but anecdotally a lot of these deals seem to be with companies that were having trouble anyway, or in the middle of a deeper structural / debt foozle. It's a time honored tactic to pressure out headcount in lean times with workload, bathroom closures, and other joyous things.
• jedberg 3y ago
  > Office landlords applaud these decisions. They see the return-to-office push by new bosses as a crucial step toward reversing the slide in rent prices, occupancy levels and property values. This right here is the entire reason. They like to say things about collaboration and innovation, but commercial real estate is really the reason (and tax breaks). I wish companies would just be honest and tell people, "look we know you don't like it but it's better for our business because we need those tax breaks and real estate price support". Edit: Instead of replying to everyone, I'll add it here: the tax breaks are butts in seats tax breaks. They have already committed to long term leases or own the buildings, so they can't get out of it by "just closing the office". They can't close the office. So they need those butts in seats tax breaks and if they own the buildings, they need the prices to stay high.
  • Kiro 3y ago
    I don't understand this. How are tax breaks better than not having the cost at all?
    • jedberg 3y ago
      Because they are already in long term leases or own the buildings, so they are already committed. But now they lose their "butts in seats" tax breaks.
      • Kiro 3y ago
        So they only get tax breaks if people are actually in the building? How is this even regulated and controlled?
        • jedberg 3y ago
          Self reporting, much like all tax breaks. They tell the city "we have this percent of our employee base required to be in the office". But they can't just lie because they might get audited.
        • bamfly 3y ago
• SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  It is astounding how tone deaf and authoritarian some CEOs feel they can be under the guise of "changing business conditions". I guess Farmers employees will have to put their jobs where their mouths are.
  • CapstanRoller 3y ago
    >how tone deaf and authoritarian some CEOs feel they can be Huh? It's not a feeling at all, it's actual reality. CEOs hold nearly complete authority. Companies are dictatorships, with tremendous power over their subjects. "Democracy in the workplace" is a core aspect of socialism.
• ubermonkey 3y ago
  Holy crap. If I had Farmer's insurance, I'd fire 'em.
• Zaheer 3y ago
  Most companies appear to be going back to 3 days a week in office and 2 as remote. I imagine this will be the most common approach going forward.
  • Analemma_ 3y ago
    Which is insane, because it's the worst of all worlds. You still have to live within commuting distance of your workplace, with all the crazy housing prices and shitty traffic conditions that entails, but you still have all the coordination difficulties of WFH. "A good compromise leaves everybody mad" strikes again.
    • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      Yeah, all this means is you'll get to hear everyone else's team calls 3 days a week.
• karaterobot 3y ago
  Where's the revolt part? I see that there were a number of posts on the company's internal social network, and evidently some very angry emojis were included in that. But if people aren't quitting over this, it doesn't mean anything. You get this instead: > The day after the outpouring of criticism, Vargas sent out another companywide email, according to employees. “It said: ‘We read all your comments. We understand and we appreciate them. But we’re still moving forward,’” one Farmers employee said. I assume plenty will quit over this. Many will have to. I'm criticizing the article, not the employees.
• mjr00 3y ago
  > That decision sparked worker outrage. More than 2,000 comments have been posted on Farmers employees’ internal social-media platform, most of which were negative or crying and angry emojis, according to postings viewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with employees. So this "revolt" was the same as any other return-to-office "revolt"... a bunch of crying about how unfair things were on some internal social platform, and then quiet acceptance of the new-new normal. Even the Amazon "walkout" protest last week only got 100 employees to show up. As it was pre-COVID, if you want a flexible work situation, make yourself valuable enough that you can demand it. Senior and specialized roles were frequently WFH pre-COVID simply because local talent didn't exist, even in markets like SF or Seattle. If your role is "generic tech employee doing generic things at large corporation" you don't have bargaining power. It might not be fair, but until unionization happens, it's the way the world works.
  • malermeister 3y ago
    And that is why tech workers should finally unionize. The amount of negotiating power we're just throwing away because of ideological blindness is insane.
    • gwright 3y ago
      This makes no sense to me. Tech workers have way more flexibility than many other types of workers. If you aren't comfortable with your employers practices, go find another employer. No need for a union to do that.
      • malermeister 3y ago
        Collective bargaining will always have more negotiating strength than individuals changing employers. The owning class right now is collectively moving to worsen work conditions by colluding in getting people back into the office. Workers should answer collectively as well or it will not go anywhere. Sure, you can change employers, but more and more employers are cracking down in the same way.
• jtbayly 3y ago
  Is there no legal liability to telling your employees they can do one thing and then forcing them to do another? It seems like part of the contract is being broken if you were hired for a remote job and then told you have to come into the office. At will employment obviously means you can fire them, but can you just change the terms of the contract at will? "I will pay you $79,000 for this position," followed by pay of $25,000 is obviously not legal. Where is the line?
  • rr808 3y ago
    True but contracts aren't everything, just ask everyone else who are the other way. Their contract says they should be working in a specific location, but they'd rather be at home.
  • pklausler 3y ago
    What contract?
  • smeej 3y ago
    You can be eligible for unemployment benefits if you "voluntarily" quit due to a significant change in working conditions, but as far as I know, that's about your only option if your employment was "at-will." And you have to quit basically right when the change happens, or very soon thereafter. If you try to live with it for 6 months and ultimately decide it's untenable, they're going to say, "Well you lived with it for six months. It obviously wasn't that untenable. So no benefits for you." (Source: Spent years adjudicating unemployment claims at the initial application and appeals levels.)
    • jtbayly 3y ago
      So if your boss decides to cut your pay by 50% suddenly, that's essentially the same thing with the same options for the employee? Live with it or quit? There's not contractual obligation on the part of the employer to actually do what they say they will?
      • pierat 3y ago
• neom 3y ago
  "Complaints on the internal social-media platform included those from workers who said they decided to home-school their children and take care of elderly relatives based on the assumption they could keep working from home." No horse in this race: Can you actually adequately home school a child and also adequately work from home?
  • forgotusername6 3y ago
    Absolutely not. No way. From my brief experience of having my kids at home during lockdown, it is just not possible to do both well at the same time.
  • mjevans 3y ago
    I am not an expert, this is all just my opinion based on personal observations of family and friends and coworkers. If the child is old enough to 'self study' as long as the adult is in the same building for legal reasons? Seems plausible. For younger children, generally our society is insane and has it's values system maladjusted in favor of having useless worker drones rather than high quality citizens for the future. However ignore the HOME-schooling part. Maybe their kids are in private or public school and the parent works during that time, answers emails for a couple hours on either side, but has flex time. THAT seems to be what's more commonly actually done.
• anarticle 3y ago
  I guess we weren't doing anything during the pandemic! Ouch. I was wondering if companies would put their money where their mouth is and pay more for attendance and let the problem solve itself. I would trade a couple days for more salary, maybe even a whole week! Think of it as location repricing in a more favorable direction. Instead, we are seeing it as a soft layoff. C'est la vie I guess.
• ethotool 3y ago
  Another copycat CEO who read somewhere that in-office work drives "collaboration, creativity and innovation" and thinks that it's the ultimate solution to solving a companies problems. In reality, all these CEO's ONLY care about the stock price and their structured earn-out/incentive compensation within their executive employment agreement and how that plays out for them.
• getmeinrn 3y ago
  >for “collaboration, creativity and innovation.” Ok, I get the first one to an extent, but why does an insurance company depend heavily on "creativity" and "innovation." I thought insurance is a pretty straightforward numbers game.
  • timbit42 3y ago
    It's bull.
• oo0shiny 3y ago
  > The day after the outpouring of criticism, Vargas sent out another companywide email, according to employees. “It said: ‘We read all your comments. We understand and we appreciate them. But we’re still moving forward,’” one Farmers employee said. Sounds like you may read them, but you don't understand or appreciate them, Mr. Vargas.
• dehrmann 3y ago
  Unless you're at a company that was remote-first before ~2000~ 2020, you'd be crazy to assume any policy like this is guaranteed for more than a year. That doesn't mean every company will go back on their promise, but if you guess 20% will in the first 5 years, it should make you think hard about whether or not to move.
  • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    > that was remote-first before 2000 I assume you mean 2020? I think many if not most of us are working at companies that didn't exist in 2000.
    • dehrmann 3y ago
      Thank you. Fixed!
  • smeej 3y ago
    Before 2000? Maybe before 2020, but it was hard to be remote-first in 2000!
• bumby 3y ago
  While I can feel for the employees, this struck me as odd: >Complaints on the internal social-media platform included those from workers who said they decided to home-school their children and take care of elderly relatives based on the assumption they could keep working from home. This seems to imply they are multi-tasking work and home duties and there's enough evidence that multi-tasking doesn't really work well. On the other hand, though, the employees claim their productivity is higher than pre-pandemic, so it's hard to gauge the truth here. Edit: I don't care about the downvotes but it would be helpful to the discussion if you add why you disagree. Do you think multitasking is feasible? Do you think the employees are not being honest about their productivity levels?
  • smeej 3y ago
    Depending on the age of the kids, "homeschooling" often means "set them up with some books and a video playlist and check in every few hours." "Caring for elderly relatives" also often means no more interruptions than the number of coworkers who walk by your desk/cubicle and interrupt you on a daily basis. I don't think one set of interruptions is inherently worse for productivity than another. And honestly the most interruptive thing for me is meetings that could easily have been emails, so...
    • bumby 3y ago
      I get there is a distribution, and there are also the other side of the spectrum. But I don't think it's unreasonable for an employer to question whether that is appropriate during normal working hours. It's not unlike an employee who wants to work remote so they can manage a side-hustle. Maybe that side gig only takes a few moments of the day but I think most employers would have reservations about hiring someone who's trying to juggle multiple jobs. I think most people would agree there is a tipping point where your side hustle comes at the expense of contributing to your main gig. The coworker interruptions may make you less productive personally, but the team more productive is it’s a work related interruption. Also, research seems to show that “small talk” interruptions contribute to overall performance. I don’t think that same tradeoff is apparent with home interruptions. I think my position is that it's up to the employer/employee to manage that expectation and there probably should be hard expectations based on what seems to be a weakly formed agreement.
• rfwhyte 3y ago
  I'd bet good money this Vargas dude has investments in commercial real estate. That's all this push to get workers back to the office is ultimately, a bald-faced attempt by the wealthy powers that be to make everything worse for everyone else, all so they can continue to get richer at an ever increasing pace. Remote work fundamentally undermines one of the cornerstones of elite wealth, that being the ownership and leasing of commercial properties. The entire industry is essentially a giant exercise in rent extraction by the wealthy, as they're giving essentially free money from the banks (if you're rich enough you get all the money you want for free!) to buy these properties, then lease them to the actually productive businesses that do things like make stuff and provider services, all while cashing fat rent checks while their properties simultaneously appreciate. It's like a giant money printing machine that's only accessible to those who are already wealthy, and remote work throws a giant monkey wrench right into the middle of it. No wonder all the CEOS and corporate funded think tanks are suddenly up in arms about "Productivity," "Communications" and "Connectedness" as if workers don't come back to the office, their giant commercial real estate money making machine slows, falters and will ultimately fail, and then god forbid the rich folks would actually have to go back to actually doing something productive to make more money.
• wvenable 3y ago
  Enough companies of all varieties have changed their work structure that remote is here to stay. For example, my company was planning to move buildings before COVID -- we are still moving -- but taking fewer floors than before. We literally no longer have enough room for everyone to work at the office full time. There are enough companies out there consistently doing this that remote work is now going to just part of the work culture everywhere. Some of these Farmer's employees are going to quit and find other remote jobs.
• silentrob 3y ago
  That is the most watered down version of the use of the word Revolt. Lets call this what it is, the CEO attempts to change the culture top down and the employees complain but ultimately go along with it.
  • bluefishinit 3y ago
    The change hasn't happened yet, so it's premature to say the employees have gone along with it (which in many cases means selling their house and moving city). In fact, I don't think any of these calls to RTO have actually been successful.
• simula67 3y ago
  I am really surprised at how the remote work situation is evolving. Despite not mandating in-person work for most of last 3 years, tech and non-tech companies have shipped great products, delivered many high quality projects; on time and within budget, thereby proving that mandatory in-person work is not necessary to make a healthy profit. Given that WFH has other benefits for both employers (lower office costs, access to a larger pool of talent etc.) and employees (reduced commute times, more flexibility of work etc.) so the return to office should be because the benefits of in-person work are above and beyond these advantages. Has this been proven? Can we see the studies? Mark Zuckerberg said that newer employees under-perform because of lack of in-person interaction. Fine, but are there any groups that outperform? What about introverts? Single mothers? Differently abled people? I would have thought that this was an opportune moment for some of the top companies to poach some top talent. I would have thought that at least one FAANG company would permanently remove the mandate for remote work causing people who wanted the flexibility to start to apply. This would trigger a 'wfh-benefit-war' among the big companies and the smaller companies would follow. However, all the FAANG companies have announced in perfect unison that workers would be mandated to come back to office. My strongest suspicion is that there is some sort of market failure in the employment market.
  • RestlessMind 3y ago
    > would have thought that this was an opportune moment for some of the top companies to poach some top talent. In fact, availability of talent cuts both ways. If you are unhappy and quit, you can be easily replaced in this environment because there are 50 other desperate candidates willing to take your job. CEOs are very smart and know this. > My strongest suspicion is that there is some sort of market failure in the employment market. Some alternative possibilities (not mutually exclusive): 1) WFH is not as popular and necessary as some of the loudest voices on HN would have you believe. 2) there is a genuine value in in-person setups and CEOs see that whereas you don't. 3) CEOs are actually smart, rational people who can think 2-3 steps ahead (contrary to the comments I see here about them being dumb sociopaths following a herd mentality)
    • hurrrr 3y ago
• aquanext 3y ago
  It'd be funny if this were the thing that catalyzes everyone to unionize.
• AviationAtom 3y ago
  I'm not opposed to mandating people work from the office, but I do think changing it up after people have altered their lifestyle accordingly is crappy. Here's how I think they should have done it: - If you live within X distance you must return X days out of the week - Employees living further must come on-site X amount of times per year - All new hires must work from in office all or X days out of the week