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Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone

Isn’t there anyone that can steelman the WFH situation? Twitter, Amazon, Zoom, others are all ending or limiting their WFH programs. Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… but what if you are wrong and it isn’t more effective?

wildrhythms 3y ago
It's the tax breaks. >Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly. >The contracts were crafted in a pre-pandemic era, at a time when commutes to the office were a given. Now governments are deciding whether to crack down or rewrite the rules entirely. In some states and cities, policy changes have already been proposed to account for the new reality of hybrid work. https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...
000ooo000 3y ago
I guess you could look at the profit/revenue of these companies over the last few years during the WFH experiment, apply some slight multiplier for "this is our first go at WFH at scale and we haven't really committed to it, either", and draw a conclusion based on that. AFAIK, many companies did pretty well during the WFH experiment, and maybe in some cases, they overhired and now this is a convenient lever to pull on to bring the headcount back in check. Speculating wildly though.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Thanks. Of all the “highly intellectual” people here, you were one of the only to partially attempt a steelman. You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. No one ever says “I’m definitely only working half time, but they’re getting enough work from me so it’s fine” or “I’m being paid more and work less, they’re so clueless they have no idea”, or ”I know a lot of people are scamming but I’m not”. So while everyone is making the argument that corporate sucks and is out of touch, they’re simultaneously saying they’re angels who would never take advantage. It’s BS, and everyone on both side knows it.
  - nmhancoc 3y ago
    > You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. I think this is a fair criticism but has an understandable explanation. What counts as abuse is not clear cut. 1. With respect to people working half time, you’re going to get push back that people do that in the office as well (inflate estimates and slack or whatever), they just then occupy themselves chatting with coworkers or doing water cooler stuff. From an IC point of view, they’re still slacking. From a corporate point of view maybe these conversations have some added value. Is the absence of them a loss or the lack of willingness to do them from home an abuse? 2. Much more controversially: overemployment. Take the same employee as above but now that they’re working from home instead of chatting they pick up contract hours or work another job. Is this an abuse? Is the company paying for time or output? Is this on the individual or management for underutilizing them? I could see different kinds of people (being motivated to) making different arguments on each side, and the issues aren’t settled.
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      I would say working another job is abuse sometimes. My job, and my employees think about the work in our off time. It’s a small team and we have big goals. If any of us had time for another job, we wouldn’t be giving this one our all. Some companies and people are fine with that. Over-employment is worth consideration. But I think something that is overlooked here is that if you aren’t doing good work, or going all in on everything you do - do something else. I see no one arguing that. Just “I deserve to work from home because I want to” without any possible consideration to either objectivity of their time /output, reality that a LOT of people scam, or empathy with what these same people would do/think if it was them calling the shots. WFH people never look bad. Look at this entire thread to find one person that bucks that trend. If one side is always right, and the other side is always wrong - that just sounds like game to me.
Shekelphile 3y ago
> Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I'd wager that most people are just as productive or more productive when WFH, but there will always be unethical people who will abuse the privilege when given the chance. There are tons of anecdotes of people just being straight up lazy, defeating naive monitoring solutions with mouse jigglers etc, or committing fraud by working multiple full time jobs concurrently.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I'd take the other side of that wager. I think most people who can WFH are doing as little as possible.
  - Shekelphile 3y ago
    If you want to go down this route I would argue that no office worker is ever very productive relative to what a blue collar employee deals with every day. You won't make them work harder by dragging them into the office, it will simply burn them out faster (1-2 hours more per day devoted to commute and cooloff from work once getting home) and employees forced into office will just steal time by taking long bathroom breaks/long lunch/sitting around chatting with buddies.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    I think most people in the office are doing as little as possible as well.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  I have seen about zero WFH people acknowledge the abuses. That’s how I know not take any of the argument too seriously. When I see someone write “but I love working half time and they have no idea but it all works out” then I’ll pay attention. Or if even accept at least “I know a lot of people are abusing it”. Instead it’s all “I’m such an honest worker”.
badlucklottery 3y ago
>it isn’t producing good work for the money? They already have a mechanism for dealing with workers who don't produce up to standards: performance improvement plans (PIP). The fact they aren't using the existing mechanism and instead are leaning on decree raises some suspicion about their motives.
dividefuel 3y ago
Shouldn't that burden be on the company? If they're shifting the working model, which is a major upheaval for those affected, shouldn't they cite some clear facts or research on why? It seems like all I've seen is platitudes about the magic of working together face-to-face, rather than hard data. I would think the steelman for WFH is the significant number of employees who clearly prefer it.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Is it good for the employee and good for the company, good for the employee and neutral for the company, or good for the employee and bad for the company? In all those cases, I'd expect employees to prefer it, but I can see the company having quite different views across the various scenarios. For myself, I thought I'd absolutely hate working from home full-time. It turns out I love it. I don't think it's obviously good for the company, but I'm not sure how bad vs neutral vs epsilon-positive it is.
jaktet 3y ago
I think it will be difficult to find supporting data that mandates all employees across every team are required to be in office 3 days a week. Given the related news about downtown areas where the offices are facing issues with lack of consumer foot traffic and increased issues with crime and social issues, it’s seems more likely at this time the decision is being made because of pressure from local governments. https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/118ihq1/seattle_mayor_praises_amazons_backtooffice_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/118ihq1/seattle_ma... https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/25/cities-cant-rely-on-employer-rtos-to-recover/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/25/cities-cant-rely-o... https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-mayor-breed-announces-return-of-city-and-county-employees-to-in-person-work/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-mayo... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-27/nordstrom-closes-san-francisco-flagship-store https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-27/nordstro... Additionally managers have typically been empowered to evaluate the effectiveness of their teams and their performance, but now an external metric is being forced on them without much visibility into the metrics themselves (e.g. badge in counts for their reports, how WFH while sick but not taking a sick day affects the metric, or various other circumstances). In my experience and prior to the pandemic, whether you were in the office or not was up to whatever discussions you’ve had with your manager, and it some cases there were employees that were allowed to work from home (or other states) based on the needs for that team. So to me this isn’t returning back to how things used to be, it’s setting a new mandate that drastically impacts an agreement and expectations between the organization that hired the employee and the employee themselves without any data supporting the decision or consideration for what a team actually needs.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Amazon and the Seattle city council don’t have a great relationship, so I doubt they are doing this with pressure from the local government.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
They can’t point to evidence of any improvement in productivity. I know from my sitting in the senior megacorp meetings planning these things there is no data backing the decisions. It’s almost entirely based on an emotional feeling that the corporate culture they grew up in won’t exist any more in a remote first culture. They’re likely right. But there’s no evidence it’ll impact productivity and there’s lots of evidence it’ll improve profits as real estate expenses and facilities are significant percentages of employee compensation. On the other hand we had plenty of convincing data that when employees can choose their work style they perform much better individually and as a team. My theory is that in five years when emotions have cooled and “culture” hand waving is a bit tired, and tax breaks have expired, cold hard money will win the argument and we will be in a “Bring Your Own Office” world.
RNCTX 3y ago
1. No, generally speaking corporate management in the 21st century does not make decisions based on effectiveness of their product or their workforce. They make decisions based on finance centered around the upcoming year or quarter. Tesla isn't interested in making good cars. Tesla is interested in selling tax credits. Period. 2. Even if #1 isn't true in an edge case, don't care.
jedberg 3y ago
You know what else is great for companies and but terrible for workers? Child labor. Yet we don't allow it because it's cruel. Companies just have to suffer the lost productivity of not having child labor. Same with two day weekends. They have to pay extra to get people to work weekends or more than five days a week. Whether it is more effective or not isn't the point. It's better for workers. The smart companies are doing it voluntarily.
hurrrr 3y ago
Amazon does not have data to motivate the RTO Source: - https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-return-to-office-rto-aws-2023-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re... - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-relies-on-serendipity-for-office-return-employees-want-data/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-relies-o...
P_I_Staker 3y ago
> I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… I have to object to your tone. In addition to the arguments you typically hear about uprooting people's lives, this is an extremely deadly policy. What do you have to say for the people that are going to die because of this? There will be more cancer and disease. The planet will be further damaged. We will be killed, maimed, torn to shreds, and/or burned to death en masse. This is not a small issue. This is slaughter for the aggrandizement of a few privileged individuals egos.

wildrhythms 3y ago

It's the tax breaks. >Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly. >The contracts were crafted in a pre-pandemic era, at a time when commutes to the office were a given. Now governments are deciding whether to crack down or rewrite the rules entirely. In some states and cities, policy changes have already been proposed to account for the new reality of hybrid work. https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...

000ooo000 3y ago

I guess you could look at the profit/revenue of these companies over the last few years during the WFH experiment, apply some slight multiplier for "this is our first go at WFH at scale and we haven't really committed to it, either", and draw a conclusion based on that. AFAIK, many companies did pretty well during the WFH experiment, and maybe in some cases, they overhired and now this is a convenient lever to pull on to bring the headcount back in check. Speculating wildly though.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Thanks. Of all the “highly intellectual” people here, you were one of the only to partially attempt a steelman. You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. No one ever says “I’m definitely only working half time, but they’re getting enough work from me so it’s fine” or “I’m being paid more and work less, they’re so clueless they have no idea”, or ”I know a lot of people are scamming but I’m not”. So while everyone is making the argument that corporate sucks and is out of touch, they’re simultaneously saying they’re angels who would never take advantage. It’s BS, and everyone on both side knows it.
- nmhancoc 3y ago
  > You know how I know that WFH side isn’t saying using the whole truth? They never look bad. I think this is a fair criticism but has an understandable explanation. What counts as abuse is not clear cut. 1. With respect to people working half time, you’re going to get push back that people do that in the office as well (inflate estimates and slack or whatever), they just then occupy themselves chatting with coworkers or doing water cooler stuff. From an IC point of view, they’re still slacking. From a corporate point of view maybe these conversations have some added value. Is the absence of them a loss or the lack of willingness to do them from home an abuse? 2. Much more controversially: overemployment. Take the same employee as above but now that they’re working from home instead of chatting they pick up contract hours or work another job. Is this an abuse? Is the company paying for time or output? Is this on the individual or management for underutilizing them? I could see different kinds of people (being motivated to) making different arguments on each side, and the issues aren’t settled.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    I would say working another job is abuse sometimes. My job, and my employees think about the work in our off time. It’s a small team and we have big goals. If any of us had time for another job, we wouldn’t be giving this one our all. Some companies and people are fine with that. Over-employment is worth consideration. But I think something that is overlooked here is that if you aren’t doing good work, or going all in on everything you do - do something else. I see no one arguing that. Just “I deserve to work from home because I want to” without any possible consideration to either objectivity of their time /output, reality that a LOT of people scam, or empathy with what these same people would do/think if it was them calling the shots. WFH people never look bad. Look at this entire thread to find one person that bucks that trend. If one side is always right, and the other side is always wrong - that just sounds like game to me.

Shekelphile 3y ago

> Doesn’t that tell anyone that there MIGHT be facts or at least good research on this that it isn’t producing good work for the money? I'd wager that most people are just as productive or more productive when WFH, but there will always be unethical people who will abuse the privilege when given the chance. There are tons of anecdotes of people just being straight up lazy, defeating naive monitoring solutions with mouse jigglers etc, or committing fraud by working multiple full time jobs concurrently.

SoftTalker 3y ago
I'd take the other side of that wager. I think most people who can WFH are doing as little as possible.
- Shekelphile 3y ago
  If you want to go down this route I would argue that no office worker is ever very productive relative to what a blue collar employee deals with every day. You won't make them work harder by dragging them into the office, it will simply burn them out faster (1-2 hours more per day devoted to commute and cooloff from work once getting home) and employees forced into office will just steal time by taking long bathroom breaks/long lunch/sitting around chatting with buddies.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I think most people in the office are doing as little as possible as well.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
I have seen about zero WFH people acknowledge the abuses. That’s how I know not take any of the argument too seriously. When I see someone write “but I love working half time and they have no idea but it all works out” then I’ll pay attention. Or if even accept at least “I know a lot of people are abusing it”. Instead it’s all “I’m such an honest worker”.

badlucklottery 3y ago

>it isn’t producing good work for the money? They already have a mechanism for dealing with workers who don't produce up to standards: performance improvement plans (PIP). The fact they aren't using the existing mechanism and instead are leaning on decree raises some suspicion about their motives.

dividefuel 3y ago

Shouldn't that burden be on the company? If they're shifting the working model, which is a major upheaval for those affected, shouldn't they cite some clear facts or research on why? It seems like all I've seen is platitudes about the magic of working together face-to-face, rather than hard data. I would think the steelman for WFH is the significant number of employees who clearly prefer it.

sokoloff 3y ago
Is it good for the employee and good for the company, good for the employee and neutral for the company, or good for the employee and bad for the company? In all those cases, I'd expect employees to prefer it, but I can see the company having quite different views across the various scenarios. For myself, I thought I'd absolutely hate working from home full-time. It turns out I love it. I don't think it's obviously good for the company, but I'm not sure how bad vs neutral vs epsilon-positive it is.

jaktet 3y ago

I think it will be difficult to find supporting data that mandates all employees across every team are required to be in office 3 days a week. Given the related news about downtown areas where the offices are facing issues with lack of consumer foot traffic and increased issues with crime and social issues, it’s seems more likely at this time the decision is being made because of pressure from local governments. https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/118ihq1/seattle_mayor_praises_amazons_backtooffice_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/118ihq1/seattle_ma... https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/25/cities-cant-rely-on-employer-rtos-to-recover/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/02/25/cities-cant-rely-o... https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-mayor-breed-announces-return-of-city-and-county-employees-to-in-person-work/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-mayo... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-27/nordstrom-closes-san-francisco-flagship-store https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-27/nordstro... Additionally managers have typically been empowered to evaluate the effectiveness of their teams and their performance, but now an external metric is being forced on them without much visibility into the metrics themselves (e.g. badge in counts for their reports, how WFH while sick but not taking a sick day affects the metric, or various other circumstances). In my experience and prior to the pandemic, whether you were in the office or not was up to whatever discussions you’ve had with your manager, and it some cases there were employees that were allowed to work from home (or other states) based on the needs for that team. So to me this isn’t returning back to how things used to be, it’s setting a new mandate that drastically impacts an agreement and expectations between the organization that hired the employee and the employee themselves without any data supporting the decision or consideration for what a team actually needs.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Amazon and the Seattle city council don’t have a great relationship, so I doubt they are doing this with pressure from the local government.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

They can’t point to evidence of any improvement in productivity. I know from my sitting in the senior megacorp meetings planning these things there is no data backing the decisions. It’s almost entirely based on an emotional feeling that the corporate culture they grew up in won’t exist any more in a remote first culture. They’re likely right. But there’s no evidence it’ll impact productivity and there’s lots of evidence it’ll improve profits as real estate expenses and facilities are significant percentages of employee compensation. On the other hand we had plenty of convincing data that when employees can choose their work style they perform much better individually and as a team. My theory is that in five years when emotions have cooled and “culture” hand waving is a bit tired, and tax breaks have expired, cold hard money will win the argument and we will be in a “Bring Your Own Office” world.

RNCTX 3y ago

1. No, generally speaking corporate management in the 21st century does not make decisions based on effectiveness of their product or their workforce. They make decisions based on finance centered around the upcoming year or quarter. Tesla isn't interested in making good cars. Tesla is interested in selling tax credits. Period. 2. Even if #1 isn't true in an edge case, don't care.

jedberg 3y ago

You know what else is great for companies and but terrible for workers? Child labor. Yet we don't allow it because it's cruel. Companies just have to suffer the lost productivity of not having child labor. Same with two day weekends. They have to pay extra to get people to work weekends or more than five days a week. Whether it is more effective or not isn't the point. It's better for workers. The smart companies are doing it voluntarily.

hurrrr 3y ago

Amazon does not have data to motivate the RTO Source: - https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-return-to-office-rto-aws-2023-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-no-data-re... - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-relies-on-serendipity-for-office-return-employees-want-data/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-relies-o...

P_I_Staker 3y ago

> I get that “corporations are bad maaaan” and all the good people are dreamy socialists… I have to object to your tone. In addition to the arguments you typically hear about uprooting people's lives, this is an extremely deadly policy. What do you have to say for the people that are going to die because of this? There will be more cancer and disease. The planet will be further damaged. We will be killed, maimed, torn to shreds, and/or burned to death en masse. This is not a small issue. This is slaughter for the aggrandizement of a few privileged individuals egos.