11 ms·

> Today, as some companies are changing their remote work policies to be return-to-office, there seems to be a lot of resentment about this, and I don't really

• macksd 3y ago
  That's because they are actually struggling to admit deeper problems with the company culture and processes that they don't know how to solve, and so they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things.
  • garciasn 3y ago
    You give them entirely too much credit. They were told by others (primarily Wall Street) that they are to do this. It provides them with three things: 1. Real estate holding investment increases. 2. Control. 3. Silent layoffs. There's no reason for RTO. None. They're doing it to save money and regain control of their workforce.
    • VBprogrammer 3y ago
      I think one thing which wasn't obvious to me early on is that halving the number of office days doesn't half the requirements for desk space. In my experience people have a strong preference for going in on similar days, particularly Tuesday and Thursday. So if you ask all of your employees to come in 2 days a week you end up needing desks for almost every employee. The result in my experience is you have either fullish remote or you need just as many desks so very little saving from a company point of view.
      • ajmurmann 3y ago
        Also, what's the point of going into the office if nobody else is there? My department had a hybrid model for a bit with a fabulous, newly built-out office. I liked seeing people in person a couple times a week. However, if I go in and nobody from my team is there or we need to still call in to meetings as if we were at home, what's the point?
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • VBprogrammer 3y ago
          Yeah, definitely. The only real value I've had from going in is when we've got some kind of social event planned (over teams / zoom this sucks) and when we've gone in with the specific plan of talking about a how we can implement a new feature which is complex and touches multiple teams (which also sucks to do online).
    • The_Colonel 3y ago
      > no reason Sounds like motivated reasoning. There are valid reasons for RTO like better communication or even better control over employees. It's a question of trade-offs.
    • superq 3y ago
      I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's actually funny the way you worded that: [three reasons for RTO] "There's no reason for RTO. None." [perhaps another]
      • garciasn 3y ago
        Yeah, I meant to say 'valid' reason, but it got dropped. It's been a day; my bad.
        • lazide 3y ago
          Valid is entirely up to the eye of the beholder. For them, they may be valid reasons even if you don’t like them. It’s all about pros/cons and either sides approach. One big one you didn’t list - it’s really hard to a manager to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester. Some (but not most!) employees may be burning out, or violating security or labor rules, or not following company policies, or whatever, and these would be trivial to detect in person, but nearly impossible to do so remotely. And almost definitely impossible to do anything about effectively while remote.
          • garciasn 3y ago
            Having ineffective management ("it’s really hard to a manager (sic) to see what is actually happening when remote, which can let some serious problems fester") is a leadership problem that is easily fixed by hiring competent and experienced leaders who have worked with remote teams. Incompetent leaders cannot manage people remotely and they generally do a poor job when in person, but it's masked by their ability to micromanage and type-A the problem away.
            • lazide 3y ago
              Ho man.
    • 303uru 3y ago
      >1. Real estate holding investment increases. Yup, our commercial real was essentially fully vacant. So they rolled out these silly blended schedules (literally just electronically sign in to the office by physically being there once a week, no time req). Now they can say, hey our office space is 90% utilized on a weekly basis! I think commercial real estate investors are going to see right through this charade, but maybe I'm overestimating them.
    • esoterica 3y ago
      (1) is a dumb conspiracy theory, the tech companies that pay rents care about their own profits, not the profits of their REIT counterparties. The idea that evil capitalists sacrifice their own profits in order to boost other companies’ profits in the name of class solidarity is one of the sillier things people on the left believe. According to your theory of how capitalism works companies work Amazon and Walmart should be volunteering to pay their suppliers as much possible in order to boost their suppliers profit margins. Obviously that is not how the world works.
      • cultureswitch 3y ago
        Maybe not this specifically, but the history of the last 200 years is littered with examples of capital owners cooperating together to elevate and secure their status as a class despite supposedly divergent individual interests. Perhaps the most obvious is how rich people who commit crimes are systematically saved by other rich people who happen to have the right connections.
    • TheKarateKid 3y ago
      Let's not forget 4. Politicians You have several from major cities (NYC, SF, etc.) saying on the record that they are going to speak to CEO's and push for RTO so that downtowns, local businesses, and neighborhoods can go back to "normal."
      • 15457345234 3y ago
        Yeah, and what I find funny is people acting like that's a stupid thing for them to be saying. Not everybody works or can work in an office. Not everybody can work in tech. Cities are symbiotic, they offer employment to both knowledge workers and non-knowledge workers. Sorry but you can't just write off the needs of that 50% of the population that aren't techcels. Yes, you will come back to cities, yes, you will re-create thriving downtowns, yes, you will do your bit. Service sector workers will not tolerate being turned into gigbots and stuffed into ghost kitchens so the PMC elite can pretend they don't exist.
        • TheKarateKid 3y ago
          You do realize that most of the service workers in major cities can't even afford to live in the neighborhoods that they work in right? They often have to commute from other cities or parts of the city which aren't at all close. Perhaps this will make things go to how they should be, which means that you work locally because that's where the demand for your services is.
      • red-iron-pine 3y ago
        This is a big one. Entire tax bases are effectively drying up because people aren't driving in or are moving away. Not just income or payroll taxes, but also regular traffic simulating the local bars, cafes, gas stations & oil changers, dry cleaning, late night pizza, you name it. If these folks can't make their nut then they can't pay rent, and end up moving away or going out of business. Then the problem snowballs. And then there are the other sources of cash, i.e. speeding tickets, parking fines, and jaywalking citations. Arguably this is the 'invisible hand of the market' doing its thing, but it's hard to run a municipality if your year-by-year tax base could change dramatically.
  • drewcoo 3y ago
    > they're trying RTO to see if it fixes things It doesn't need to fix things. It just needs to appear they're "doing something."
    • biomcgary 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_bias
  • api 3y ago
    Another very common reason is a technique to achieve a passive-aggressive round of layoffs. Announce RTO, lose some employees, and you don't have to pay any severance or take the morale hit of letting people go. I've even heard of companies reversing the RTO mandate after the desired number of employees have left. Or just not actually enforcing it and soft-pedaling the whole thing.
• cableshaft 3y ago
  > "Remote work is here to stay and will never go away" early on and often. It wasn't until about a year in that they started changing their tune and gaslighting us with "we never said remote work was here to stay, where did you get such a silly idea?" Pretty much exactly this happened at my company. They started touting these new offices they got for a steal, but in the all-hands said "our company has never required anyone to come in to the office and we never will". Three months later, they start encouraging everyone to come in once a week. Three months later, they changed it to 'we expect you to be in 4 days a week', and in the all-hands one of the founders went "We never said we wouldn't have you come back into the office. I love seeing people in person, that would be silly of me to say!" Technically it's not a requirement, just an "expectation", so I still haven't gone in more than necessary. But I'm not expecting a great performance review next year because of it, and I'm not sure how much longer I'll stick around either (it does look like most other places are being even worse about it right now, though). I was so angry to hear that. Not the only time they gaslit either. They also had a round of layoffs about six months ago while trying not to call them layoffs ("we let a bunch of people go today, it's not a layoff though, they just weren't performant enough to work here"), that really rubbed me the wrong way too.
  • lazide 3y ago
    If it’s not in writing, it ‘never happened’ - and even then, make sure you have a copy they can’t get at and know your odds of a successful prosecution under the law (and your ability and willingness to see it through). Because sometimes that will be required.
    • snotrockets 3y ago
      Oh, they put it in writing. Then they wrote something else.
      • lazide 3y ago
        Sounds like it’s time for a folder.
• EFreethought 3y ago
  > remote work isn't working for us It is working out. I looked at a few financial statements for a few companies pushing RTO (Amazon and a couple of Wall Street firms). Granted, it wasn't comprehensive or scientific, but: They all made more money in 2022 than in 2019 (the last year before COVID). So I really do not see what the problem is.
  • snotrockets 3y ago
    Managers can't look out of the office and feel powerful by watching the people they control.
    • 3seashells 3y ago
      This is what I do not get. Just give them some un-skilled people as placeholders, so there social anxiety doesn't fire. Sit the janitors into the open office or the team building guys.
      • ryandrake 3y ago
        I think it would be a great business opportunity to offer paid actors who would go into a business, walk around, maybe give a few of them clipboards, have them have water cooler conversations, maybe write some technical looking stuff on whiteboards, and generally move around looking busy. This would simulate the thrill and "buzz" of managing a busy office for these executives to cosplay without having to drag unwilling employees back.
        • ryanwaggoner 3y ago
          Better yet, just do it as discounted coworking space. Win / win.
    • ajmurmann 3y ago
      Here are a few things that aren't working out from a management perspective: Social bonding is much harder, but important for reliable collaboration, especially when there are disagreements. I also believe that conversations are more likely to derail when they aren't in person. I've also been part of so many lunch conversations in the office that resulted in someone being able to help out someone on a different team with an issue they had solved themselves previously, learn about activities on another team that were relevant to them etc. There are ways to achieve similar things in a remote setup, but it's hard, especially to deploy across large companies with thousands of people. For the record, I've worked fully in person, hybrid and remote and think hybrid is by far the hardest to make work.
• cj 3y ago
  > "Hey, this is only temporary" I'd be far less disappointed Ironically, during peak covid lockdowns, "this is only temporary" may have actually been seen as reckless and irresponsible. "There's a pandemic! We need to be remote for the foreseeable future, not just temporarily!1!1" (etc...) During peak covid, a lot of people made decisions that they reneged or reversed later. I'll get downvoted if I empathize with the executives making these decisions, but all I'll say is that no one had a crystal ball in 2020/2021. I give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt that they believed what they were saying at the time they said it (even if they have since reversed their opinion). I don't think anyone was expecting the tech bubble to burst until it did. I don't think anyone was expecting the degree of inflation which led to interest rates which led to big tech downsizing, etc. A lot of people made a lot of mistakes. One of the top mistakes a lot of companies made was hiring people outside of their HQ cities and they're trying to correct that now. Edit: To be clear I'm a proponent of remote work. Our company has been remote since before covid. Pro tip for anyone in the job market: look for companies that were remote pre-Covid and be skeptical about WFH promises if the company was forced to go remote after 2020.
  • uhhhhhhh 3y ago
    I remember a vocal group predicting the economic bubbles would burst while pointing to them growing for a while. The only real disagreement was on when not if. While no one has a crystal ball it was known pre pandemic that bubbles were there and unsustainable and not far from being at bursting levels. I know many in my circle were talking about when the dominoes would fall and which ones would topple which others in 2020-2022 as the pandemic raged on. The inevitable outcome of the social supports on top of the economic bubbles happening and then both likely ending at similar times was predictable in anyone thinking in longer terms than the next quarter and next fiscal year. Meanwhile CEOs took advantage of conditions to go on insane M&A deals, hiring sprees and personal project schemes with little framework for any of that succeeding long term, and burning tons of cash with stock buybacks to keep up with the expected growth targets. Once the 'Bubble' everyone saw about to burst met the realities of the pandemic and costs rippled through supply chains no one should have been surprised. Unfortunately the tech segment is way too much follow the leader/money right now and once the few big names start moving it happens regardless of it being good or bad.
• tremon 3y ago
  changing their tune and gaslighting us with "we never said I've come to view this as a personality type, the eager salesman (or less charitably, the habitual bullshitter). They will say whatever serves their needs at the moment, and never carries any long-term weight. When they say "we never said that", they actually mean it -- because what they remember were their unspoken motivations, not the words they spoke to achieve it. You can probably find them in the hierarchy of most organizations, as they're good with words and readily commit to changing strategies. They must be, because they need to have a new strategy ready for when the old one inevitably fails. Admitting to mistakes is not part of their personality, the most you will get (if anything) is that their idea was sound but the problem was in the execution or in unforeseen (by them) circumstances. Learn to recognize the type. If their goals align with yours, they can be useful idiots, but always have a counter-strategy for when the winds inevitably turn.