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> with little evidence that’s a better way to work. You are assuming that decision makers are dumb. I disagree with that. My null hypothesis is that they are s

> with little evidence that’s a better way to work. You are assuming that decision makers are dumb. I disagree with that. My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing.

jupp0r 3y ago
You are assuming that they see high attrition of their best talent as something bad. Sometimes they don't seem to care if the numbers in Excel look good.
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. Speaking as a senior manager at a smallish software company (300 people), absolutely, decision makers are in my experience smart and competent. But what they don't do is necessarily make decisions based on data. I don't believe for a second that most RTO debates are based on meaningful measurement. As with a lot of corporate decisions, I suspect it's a lot of HIPPOs, fingers in the air, and herding behavior.
- Agentlien 3y ago
  When I joined my current employer the biggest drawback was that unlike my previous job they did not allow remote work. Managers were against it because they were paranoid about people slacking off. The pandemic hit, we transitioned to remote work, I was happy. Everyone quickly adapted and learned how to efficiently work from home. About two years later, two things happened: 1. Surveys and postmortems showed that remote work lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity at our company. 2. Company leadership started talking about a mandated return to office. People of course challenged this decision, pointing to the data, and no real explanation was given. Those who wanted to returned to office, but the mandated return was indefinitely postponed and eventually silently dropped as the manager primarily pushing for a return left the company.
fzeroracer 3y ago
> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. That's precisely the problem. The decision makers suffer from extreme confirmation bias and Dunning-Kruger effect. So what happens is they run surveys, polls etc which are loaded and indicate that employees would 'love' to return to the office. They mandate RTO and are then surprised when people leave en masse because the data they've collected is wrong.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
> You are assuming that decision makers are dumb That's only a single aspect, whilst it's also a very wide aspect. They may not be dumb, they may be "politically smart" and their KPIs are easiest to meet when their subordinates are in the office. They may not be dumb, but they feel less powerful (and therefore that their position as decision maker is more vulnerable) when their workforce is outside of whipping distance. They may not be dumb, but their idea of "normal" is not what covid hath wrought, and therefore a return to the office is a return to "normal", and thus a heaving sigh of relief can be had that we're now past that extended weirdness. They may not be dumb, but they may not be able to understand that people are motivated differently from themselves and from each other. "I work better in the office, therefore y'all do too". (admittedly there's a bit of dumbness in that one, however that's far from saying it's unrealistic or rare). > according to data they are seeing Anecdotal warning: Outside of the "best of the best" kinda places, my experience is that most decision makers work on 'feel' and not data - whether data is available or not.
- pmontra 3y ago
  KPIs adapt to circumstances but the thing about power is correct. I seen many power plays and the size of the "army" of the managers and how much they could assert control were important parts of them. If employees are dispersed they can't help the "generals" too much.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  The "best of the best" places are also managed by feel and not data. There's even some kind of rationalization for that: at a sufficiently high management level, they have to make a decision every 30 seconds on average. That's mostly gut-driven by necessity... Thing is, that normally works out, but large shifts like the "new normal" during the pandemic can take a while for the gut to pick up, and so the default is to get back to the known-good state...
flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
Let's flip this around: do you (or decision makers) have any evidence that remote work is worse? Without that data, and barring ulterior motives (such as attrition without severance), reversing the status quo and enforcing return to office is, by definition, not a sound data-driven decision.
danjac 3y ago
They might be making the "best decision", but best decision for whom? Their own career, social standing and property investment portfolio? Or the best decision for the company and employee well-being and productivity?
caskstrength 3y ago
> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. I agree. They are seeing the data that their skills of busy-bodies bouncing between meetings and impromptu conversations at other employees desks don't translate well to remote work and they understand that their nice 3mil$ house in the valley will cost much less in couple of years if everyone embraces full remote, so they are doing their best to preserve the status quo.
Ialdaboth 3y ago
Decision makers are politicians, their job is to take the most politically efficient decision according to data. Deciding if it was the best decision to take or not is the job of historians.

jupp0r 3y ago

You are assuming that they see high attrition of their best talent as something bad. Sometimes they don't seem to care if the numbers in Excel look good.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago

> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. Speaking as a senior manager at a smallish software company (300 people), absolutely, decision makers are in my experience smart and competent. But what they don't do is necessarily make decisions based on data. I don't believe for a second that most RTO debates are based on meaningful measurement. As with a lot of corporate decisions, I suspect it's a lot of HIPPOs, fingers in the air, and herding behavior.

Agentlien 3y ago
When I joined my current employer the biggest drawback was that unlike my previous job they did not allow remote work. Managers were against it because they were paranoid about people slacking off. The pandemic hit, we transitioned to remote work, I was happy. Everyone quickly adapted and learned how to efficiently work from home. About two years later, two things happened: 1. Surveys and postmortems showed that remote work lead to increased employee satisfaction and productivity at our company. 2. Company leadership started talking about a mandated return to office. People of course challenged this decision, pointing to the data, and no real explanation was given. Those who wanted to returned to office, but the mandated return was indefinitely postponed and eventually silently dropped as the manager primarily pushing for a return left the company.

fzeroracer 3y ago

> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. That's precisely the problem. The decision makers suffer from extreme confirmation bias and Dunning-Kruger effect. So what happens is they run surveys, polls etc which are loaded and indicate that employees would 'love' to return to the office. They mandate RTO and are then surprised when people leave en masse because the data they've collected is wrong.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

> You are assuming that decision makers are dumb That's only a single aspect, whilst it's also a very wide aspect. They may not be dumb, they may be "politically smart" and their KPIs are easiest to meet when their subordinates are in the office. They may not be dumb, but they feel less powerful (and therefore that their position as decision maker is more vulnerable) when their workforce is outside of whipping distance. They may not be dumb, but their idea of "normal" is not what covid hath wrought, and therefore a return to the office is a return to "normal", and thus a heaving sigh of relief can be had that we're now past that extended weirdness. They may not be dumb, but they may not be able to understand that people are motivated differently from themselves and from each other. "I work better in the office, therefore y'all do too". (admittedly there's a bit of dumbness in that one, however that's far from saying it's unrealistic or rare). > according to data they are seeing Anecdotal warning: Outside of the "best of the best" kinda places, my experience is that most decision makers work on 'feel' and not data - whether data is available or not.

pmontra 3y ago
KPIs adapt to circumstances but the thing about power is correct. I seen many power plays and the size of the "army" of the managers and how much they could assert control were important parts of them. If employees are dispersed they can't help the "generals" too much.
pgeorgi 3y ago
The "best of the best" places are also managed by feel and not data. There's even some kind of rationalization for that: at a sufficiently high management level, they have to make a decision every 30 seconds on average. That's mostly gut-driven by necessity... Thing is, that normally works out, but large shifts like the "new normal" during the pandemic can take a while for the gut to pick up, and so the default is to get back to the known-good state...

flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago

Let's flip this around: do you (or decision makers) have any evidence that remote work is worse? Without that data, and barring ulterior motives (such as attrition without severance), reversing the status quo and enforcing return to office is, by definition, not a sound data-driven decision.

danjac 3y ago

They might be making the "best decision", but best decision for whom? Their own career, social standing and property investment portfolio? Or the best decision for the company and employee well-being and productivity?

caskstrength 3y ago

> My null hypothesis is that they are smart, competent people and are doing the best decision according to data they are seeing. I agree. They are seeing the data that their skills of busy-bodies bouncing between meetings and impromptu conversations at other employees desks don't translate well to remote work and they understand that their nice 3mil$ house in the valley will cost much less in couple of years if everyone embraces full remote, so they are doing their best to preserve the status quo.

Ialdaboth 3y ago

Decision makers are politicians, their job is to take the most politically efficient decision according to data. Deciding if it was the best decision to take or not is the job of historians.